DROWNING THE TORRENT IN VEGETATION. 75 



or fourteen feet apart, narrow terraces, supported on their lower edges 

 by pebble walls, and having their upper surfaces slightly sloping in 

 toward the mountain, so that water would be checked, and, as far as 

 possible, made to soak in and find the spring-reservoirs. 



After all these preliminary works were executed, the final planting 

 began. Generally, the terraces and the more level and deep made- 

 ground in the lateral ravines were stocked from nurseries which were 

 established here and there in the districts to be reclaimed. Where 

 the spaces between the terraces were especially liable to washing, they 

 were covered by thatchings of brush, retained if necessary by stones 

 or any convenient rubbish. 



In gorges and other places where the danger of erosion and the 

 difiiculty of getting out large timber would be greater than elsewhere, 

 the kinds of trees selected were such as shoot readily from the stump, 

 grow rapidly, and can be frequently cut with profit — in other words, 

 those more especially suited to coppice or sprout-growth culture. A 

 dense coppice resists the pelting of rain and fixes the soil better than 

 larger trees. The kinds selected for such places were therefore acacias, 

 ashes, elms, maples, willows, alders, poi^lars, lindens, etc. 



By working with a s^^fficiently large force to cover an entire basin 

 with the various j)reliminary works, and then to plant, promptly and 

 simultaneously, the plantations wore not washed away ; on the con- 

 trary, to use the vivid words of Cezanne : " These works, so ingenious 

 in their very simplicity, form a net-Mork of horizontal lines, like the 

 alleys of a garden. The green edgings and linings develop them- 

 selves among the innumerable sinuosities of the combes [valleys], em- 

 bracing, from the rocky beds of the torrents to the very summit of the 

 mountain-crests, those ravines which were but lately inaccessible, and 

 presented an aspect full of horror. On seeing what has been done, one 

 immediately understands how such a combination should be effectual. 

 Every liquid molecule, so to speak, is seized individually, the thin sheet 

 of water flowing down is retarded in its course by a thousand thirsty 

 little plants, by the lines of cultivated herbage, and by the hedges of 

 shoots and trees. It is compelled to tarry a little on each terrace to 

 slake the thirst of the ground, and when it reaches the lower end of a 

 furrow it spreads itself out on the flattened bed there prepared for it. 

 Stopped at every barrier, it loses its vital force on every hand, and 

 finally, from resting-place to resting-place, and from descent to de- 

 scent, it arrives, after a thousand retardations, and still limpid, in the 

 channel which conveys it to the river. The violence of torrents is 

 occasioned by the combination of an infinitude of elements infinitely 

 minute ; and the system of extinction consists in extinguishing each 

 of these elements without disregarding one ; it is an accumulation of 

 infinitesimal littles. The secondary ravines are blocked up, their 

 minute ramifications are intercepted, the lesser flanks are filled up, 

 and finally there are spread over the soils, completely to diffuse them, 



