TORKENTS EN" FRANCE. 245 



from the Col Isoard, whicli lie calls " a complete type of a basin 

 of reception," that is, a gorge wliich serves as a common point of 

 accumulation and discbarge for tlie waters of several lateral tor- 

 rents. " Tbe aspect of tbe monstrous cbannel," says be, " is 

 frigbtf ul. "Witbin a distance of less tban two Engbsb miles, more 

 tban sixty torrents bm-1 into tbe depths of the gorge tbe d^bria 

 torn from its two flanks. Tbe smallest of these secondary tor- 

 rents, if transferred to a fertile valley, would be enough to ruin 

 it." 



Tbe eminent political economist Blanqui, in a memoir read be- 

 fore tbe Academy of Moral and Pobtical Science on the 25th of 

 ^November, 1843, thus expresses liimseK : " Important as are the 

 causes of impoverishment already described they are not to be 

 compared to tbe consequences which have followed from tbe two 

 inveterate evils of tbe Alpine provinces of France, the extension 

 of clearing and the ravages of torrents The most import- 

 ant result of this destruction is this : that the agricultural capital, 

 or rather tbe ground itself — ^wliicb, in a rapidly increasing degree, 

 is daily swept away by the waters — ^is totally lost. Signs of un- 

 paralleled destitution are visible in all the mountain zone, and the 

 BoHtudes of those districts are assuming an indescribable character 

 of sterUity and desolation. Tbe gradual destruction of tbe woods 

 has, in a thousand locaKties, annihilated at once the springs and 

 tbe fuel. Between Grenoble and BriauQon, in the valley of the 

 Komanche, 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 Em- 

 brun, and of Yerdun, and that Arabia Petrsea of tbe department 

 of the Upper Alps, called Devoluy, knows that there is no time 

 to lose — that in fifty years from this date France wiU be sepa- 

 rated 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 



* Ladoucette says the peasant of Devoluy "often goes a distance of five 

 hours over rocks and precipices for a single [man's] load of -wood"; and he 

 remarks on another page, that " the justice of peace of that canton had, in the 

 coiirse of forty-three years, but once heard the voice of the nightingale."— 

 Histoire, etc., dea Sautes Alpes, pp. 220, 434. 



