ACTION OF TOEEENTS. 257 



resembling those jnst described fall under the eye of the ordinary 

 traveller. But the extension of the sphere of devastation, by the 

 degradation of the mountains and the transportation of their de- 

 bris, is producing analogous effects upon the lower ridges of the 

 Alps and the plains which skirt them ; and even now one needs 

 but an hour's departure from some great thoroughfares, to reach 

 sites where the genius of destruction revels as wildly as in the 

 most frightful of the abysses which Blanqui has painted.* 



* The Skaliira-Tobel, for instance, near Coire. See the description of this 

 and other like scenes in Berlepsch, Die Alpen, pp. 169 et seq., or in Stephen's 

 English translation. 



About an hour from Thusis, on the Splilgen road, " opens the awful chasm 

 of the NoUa, which a hundred years ago poured its peaceful waters through 

 smiling meadows protected by the wooded slopes of the mountains. But the 

 woods were cut down and with them departed the rich pastures, the pride of 

 the valley, now covered with piles of rock and rubbish swept down from the 

 mountains. This result is the more to be lamented as it was entirely com- 

 passed by the improvidence of man in thinning the forests." — Morell, Scien- 

 tific Guide to Sicitzerland, p. 100. 



The recent change in the character of the Mella — a river anciently so re- 

 markable for the gentleness of its current that it was specially noticed by 

 Catullus as flowing molli fl,umine — deserves more than a passing remark. This 

 river rises in the mountain chain east of Lake Iseo, and traversing the district 

 of Brescia, empties into the Oglio after a course of about seventy miles. The 

 iron- works in the upper valley of the Mella had long created a considerable de- 

 mand for wood, but their operations were not so extensive as to occasion any 

 very sudden or general destruction of the forests, and the only evil experienced 

 from the clearings was the gradual diminution of the volume of the river. 

 Within the last thirty years, the superior quality of the arms manufactured 

 at Brescia has greatly enlarged the sale of them, and very naturally stimulated 

 the activity of both the forges and of the colliers who supply them, and the 

 hillsides have been rapidly stripped of their timber. Up to 1850 no destruc- 

 tive inundation of the Mella had been recorded. Buildings in great numbers 

 had been erected upon its margin, and its valley was conspicuous for its rural 

 beauty and its fertility. But when the denudation of the mountains had 

 reached a certain point, avenging nature began the work of retribution. In 

 the spring and summer of 1850 several new torrents were suddenly formed in 

 the upper tributary valleys, and on the 14th and 15th of August in that year a 

 fall of rain, not heavier than had been often experienced, produced a flood 

 which not only inundated much ground never before overflowed, but destroyed 

 a great number of bridges, dams, factories, and other valuable structures, and, 

 what was a far more serious evil, swept off from the rocks an incredible ex- 

 tent of soil, and converted one of the most beautiful valleys of the Italian 

 Alps into a ravine almost as bare and as barren as the savagest gorge of 

 Southern France. The pecuniary damage was estimated at many millions of 



