256 TOEKENTS OF EUROPE. 



to minute fragments. If tlie blocks hurled down from the cliffs 

 were transported unbroken to the channels of large rivers, the me- 

 chanical force of their movement would be irresistible. They 

 would overthrow the strongest barriers, spread themselves over 

 a surface as wide as the flow of the waters, and convert the most 

 smihng valleys into scenes of the wildest desolation. 



As I have before remarked, I have taken my illustrations of 

 the action of torrents and mountain streams principally from 

 French authorities, because the facts recorded by them are 

 chiefly of recent occurrence, and as they have been collected 

 with much care and described with great fulness of detail, the 

 information furnished by them is not only more trustworthy, but 

 both more complete and more accessible than that which can be 

 gathered from any other source. It is not to be supposed, how- 

 ever, that the countries adjacent to France have escaped the con- 

 sequences of a like improvidence. The southern flanks of the 

 Alps, and, in a less degree, the northern slope of these moun- 

 tains and the whole chain of the Pyrenees, afford equally strik- 

 ing examples of the evils resulting from the wanton sacrifice of 

 nature's safeguards. But I can afford space for few details, and 

 as an illustration of the extent of these evils in Italy, I shall 

 barely observe that it was calculated ten years ago that four- 

 tenths of the area of the Ligurian provinces had been washed 

 away or rendered incapable of cultivation in consequence of the 

 felling of the woods.* 



Highly colored as these pictures seem, they are not exaggera- 

 ted, although the hasty tourist through Southern France, Switzer- 

 land, Tyrol, and Northern Italy, finding little in his high-road ob- 

 servations to justify them, might suppose them so. The lines of 

 communication by locomotive train and diligence lead generally 

 over safer ground, and it is only when they ascend the Alpine 

 passes and traverse the mountain chains, that scenes somewhat 



* Annali di Agricoltura, Industria e Commereio, vol. i., p. 77. Similar in- 

 stances of the erosive power of running water might be collected by hundreds 

 from the narratives of travellers in warm countries. The energy of the tor- 

 rents of the Himalayas is such, that the brothers Schlagintweit believe 

 they will cut gorges through that lofty chain wide enough to admit the pas- 

 sage of currents of warm wind from the south, and thereby modify the climate 

 of the countries lying to the north of the mountains. 



