320 roEMATioisr of toerents. 



any of tlie American Atlantic States, but still they have rapid 

 slopes and loose and friable soils enough to render widespread 

 desolation certain, if the further destruction of the woods is not 

 soon arrested. The effects of clearing are already perceptible in 

 the comparatively unviolated region of which I am speaking-. 

 The rivers which rise in it flow with diminished currents in dry 

 seasons, and with augmented volumes of water after heavy rains. 

 They bring down larger quantities of sediment, and the increas- 

 ing obstructions to the navigation of the Hudson, which are ex- 

 tending themselves down the channel in proportion as the fields 

 are encroaching upon the forest, give good grounds for the fear 

 of irreparable injury to the commerce of the important towns on 

 the upper waters of that river, unless measures are taken to pre- 

 vent the expansion of " improvements " which have abeady been 

 carried beyond the demands of a wise economy.* 



In the Eastern United States the general character of the cli- 

 mate, soil and surface is such, that for the formation of very (de- 

 structive torrents a much longer time is required than would be 

 necessary in the mountainous provinces of Italy or of France. 

 But the work of desolation has begun even there, and wherever 

 a rapid mountain-slope has been stripped of wood, incipient ra- 

 vines abeady plough the surface, and collect the precipitation in 

 channels which threaten serious mischief in the future. There 

 is a peculiar action of this sort on the sandy surface of pine-for- 

 ests, and in other soils that unite readily with water, which has 

 excited the attention of geographers and geologists. Soils of the 

 first kind are found in all the Eastern States ; those of the second 

 are more frequent in the exhausted counties of Maryland, where 

 tobacco is cultivated, and in the more southern territories of 

 Georgia and Alabama. In these locahties the ravines which 

 appear after the cutting of the forest, through some accidental 

 disturbance of the surface, or, in some formations, through the 

 cracking of the soil in consequence of great drought or heat, en- 

 large and extend themselves with fearful rapidity. 



* I leam with profound regret that, during the nineteen years that have 

 passed since the above was written, the forests of the Adirondacks have con- 

 tinued to be the scene of ever more and more rapidly encroaching inroads from 

 the woodman's axe, and that there now seems little hope of averting the total 

 destruction which must soon overtake them unless a wiser legislation or a 

 sovmder public opinion should interfere to save them. 



