246 TOKEENTS IN FEANCE. 



very productive even down to so late a period as the commence- 

 ment of the French Kevolution. Arthur Young, writing in 1789, 

 says : " About Barcelonette and in the highest parts of the moun- 

 tains, 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 suppose a country barren because it ia 

 mountainous. The valleys I have visited are, in general, beauti- 

 tiful." * He ascribes the same character to the provinces of Dau- 

 phiny, Provence and Auvergne, and, though he visited, with the 

 eye of an attentive and practiced observer, many of the scenes 

 since blasted with the wild desolation described by Blanqui, the 

 Durance and a part of the course of the Loire are the only streams 

 he mentions as inflicting serious injury by their floods. The 

 ravages of the torrents had, indeed, as we have seen, commenced 

 earher in some other localities, but we are authorized to infer that 

 they were, in Young's time, too Kmited in range, and relatively 

 too insignificant, to require notice in a general view of the prov- 

 inces where they have now ruined so large a proportion of the 

 soil. 



But I resume my citations. 



"I do not exaggerate," says Blanqui. "When I shall have 

 finished my description and designated locahties by their names, 

 there will rise, I am sure, more than one voice from the spots 

 themselves, to attest the rigorous exactness of this picture of their 

 wretchedness. I have never seen its equal even in the Kabyle 

 villages of the province of Constantine ; for there you can travel 

 on horseback, and you find grass in the spring, whereas in more 

 than fifty communes in the Alps there is absolutely nothing. 



" The clear, brilhant, Alpine sky of Embrun, of Gap, of Barce 

 lonette, and of Digne, which for months is without a cloud, pro- 

 duces droughts interrupted only by diluvial rains like those of the 

 tropics. The abuse of the right of pasturage and the felling of 

 the woods have stripped the soil of all its grass and of all its trees, 



* The valley of Embnm, now almost completely devastated, was once re- 

 markable for its fertility. In 1806, Hericart de Thury said of it : "In this 

 magnificent valley nature had been prodigal of her gifts. Its inhabitants have 

 blindly revelled in her favors, and fallen asleep in the midst of her profu- 

 fiion." — ^Becquekel, Bes Glimats, etc., p. 314 



