TORRENTS IN FRANCE. 951 
from the two inveterate evils of the Alpine provinces of 
France, the extension of clearing and the ravages of torrents. 
. .. The most important result of this destruction is this: 
that the agricultural capital, or rather the ground itself— 
which, in a rapidly increasing degree, is daily swept away by 
the waters—is totally lost. Signs of unparalleled destitution 
are visible in all the mountain zone, and the solitudes of those 
districts are assuming an indescribable character of sterility 
and desolation. The gradual destruction of the woods has, in 
a thousand localities, annihilated at once the springs and the 
fuel. Between Grenoble and Briangon, in the valley of the 
Romanche, many villages are so destitute of wood that they are 
reduced to the necessity of baking their bread with sun-dried 
cow-dung, and even this they can afford to do but once a year. 
“ Whoever has visited the valley of Barcelonette, those of 
Embrun, and of Verdun, and that Arabia Petreea of the de- 
partment of the Upper Alps, called Dévoluy, knows that there 
is no time to lose—that in fifty years from this date France 
will be separated from Savoy, as Egypt from Syria, by a 
desert.”’ * 
It deserves to be specially noticed that the district here 
referred to, though now among the most hopelessly waste in 
France, was very productive even down to so late a period as 
the commencement of the French Revolution. Arthur Young, 
writing in 1789, says: “About Barcelonette and in the high- 
est parts of the mountains, the hill-pastures feed a million of 
sheep, besides large herds of other cattle;” and he adds: 
“With such a soil and in such a climate, we are not to sup- 
pose a country barren because it is mountainous. The valleys 
I have visited are, in general, beautiful.”+ He ascribes the 
* Ladoucette says the peasant of Dévoluy ‘‘ often goes a distance of five 
hours over rocks and precipices for a single [man’s] load of wood ;” and he re- 
marks on another page, that ‘‘ the justice of peace of that canton had, in 
the course of forty-three years, but once heard the voice of the nightingale.” — 
Histoire, ete., des Hautes Alpes, pp. 220, 434. 
{ The valley of Embrun, now almost completely devastated, was once re- 
urkable for its fertility. In 1806, Héricart de Thury said of it: ‘‘In this 
