Conservation of Natural Resources in California. 57 



meadows, they are now too far deteriorated to be reclaimable by man, 

 nor can they become again fitted for human use. ' ' 



"The Alps of Provence present a terrible aspect. In the more 

 equable climate of northern France, one can form no conception of 

 those parched mountain gorges, where not even a bush can be found to 

 shelter a bird, where, at most, the wanderer sees in summer here and 

 there a withered lavender, where all the springs are dried up, and where 

 a dead silence, hardly broken by even the hum of an insect, prevails. 

 But if a storm bursts forth, masses of water suddenly shoot from the 

 mountain heights into the shattered gulfs, waste without irrigating, 

 deluge without refreshing the soil they overflow in their swift descent, 

 and leave it even more seared than it was from want of moisture. Man 

 at last retires from the fearful desert, and I have, the present season, 

 found not a living soul in districts where I remember to have enjoyed 

 hospitality thirty years ago. ' ' 



* ' It is certain that the productive mould of the Alps, swept off by the 

 increasing violence of that curse of the mountains, the torrents, is daily 

 diminishing with fearful rapidity. All our Alps are wholly, or in large 

 proportion, bared of wood. Their soil, scorched by the sun of Provence, 

 cut up by the hoofs of the sheep, which, not finding on the surface the 

 grass they require for their sustenance, gnaw and scratch the ground 

 in search of roots to satisfy their hunger, is periodically washed and 

 carried off by melting snows and summer storms." 



' ' I will not dwell on the effects of the torrents. For sixty years they 

 have been too often depicted to require to be further discussed, but it is 

 important to show that their ravages are daily extending the range of 

 devastation. The bed of the Durance, which now in some places exceeds 

 a mile and a quarter in width, and, at ordinary times, has a current 

 of water less than eleven yards wide, shows something of the extent of 

 the damage. Where ten years ago, there were still woods and cultivated 

 grounds to be seen, there is now but a vast torrent ; there is not one of 

 our mountains which has not at least one torrent, and new ones are 

 daily forming. 



"In the days of the Roman Empire the Durance was a navigable, 

 or, at least, a boatable, river, with a commerce so important that the 

 boatmen upon it formed a distinct corporation. 



"Even as early as 1789 the Durance was computed to have already 

 covered with gravel and pebbles not less than 130,000 acres, which but 

 for its inundations, would have been the finest land in the province." 



