TORRENTS IN FRANCE. 955 
off by the increasing violence of that curse of the mountains, 
the torrents, is daily diminishing with fearful rapidity. All 
our Alps are wholly, or in large proportion, bared of wocd. 
Their soil, scorched by the sun of Provence, cut up by the 
hoofs of the sheep, which, not finding on the surface the grass 
they require for their sustenance, gnaw and scratch the ground 
in search of roots to satisfy their hunger, is periodically washed 
and carried off by melting snows and summer storms. 
“T will not dwell on the effects of the torrents. Jor sixty 
years they have been too often depicted to require to be 
further discussed, but it is important to show that their ravages 
are daily extending the range of devastation. The bed of the 
Durance, which now in some places exceeds a mile and a 
quarter in width, and, at ordinary times, has a current of water 
less than eleven yards wide, shows something of the extent of 
the damage.* Where, ten years ago, there were still woods and 
cultivated grounds to be seen, there is now but a vast torrent ; 
there is not one of our mountains which has not at least one 
torrent, and new ones are daily forming. 
“ An indirect proof of the diminution of the soil is to be 
found in the depopulation of the country. In 1852 I reported 
to the General Council that, according to the census of that 
year, the population of the department of the Lower Alps 
had fallen off no less than 5,000 souls in the five years between 
1846 and 1851. 
“Unless prompt and energetic measures are taken, it is easy 
to fix the epoch when the French Alps will be but a desert. 
The interval between 1851 and 1856 will show a further de- 
crease of population. In 1862 the ministry will announce a 
* In the days of the Roman Empire the Durance was a navigable, or at least 
a boatable, river, with a commerce so important that the boatmen upon it 
formed a distinct corporation.—LADOUCETTE, Histoire, etc., des Hautes Alpes, 
p. 304. 
Even as early as 1789 the Durance was computed to have already covered 
with gravel and pebbles not less than 130,000 acres, ‘‘ which, but for its inun- 
dations, would have been the finest land in the province.”—ARTHUR YOUNG, 
Travels in France, vol. i., ch. i. 
