MUD. 129 



with shaded eyes, not on a level plain such as we see 

 to-day, but on a great arm of the sea which stretched 

 like a gulf far up towards the base of the hills about 

 Turin and Eivoli. Of this ancient sea the Adriatic forms 

 the still unsilted portion. In other words, the great 

 gulf which now stops short at Trieste and Venice once 

 washed the foot of the Alps and the Apennines to the 

 Superga at Turin, covering the sites of Padua, Ferrara, 

 Bologna, Eavenna, Mantua, Cremona, Modena, Parma, 

 Piacenza, Pavia, Milan, and Novara. The industrious 

 reader who gets out his Baedeker and looks up the 

 shaded map of North Italy which forms its frontispiece 

 will be rewarded for his pains by a better comprehension 

 of the district thus demarcated. The idle must be 

 content to take my word for what follows. I pledge 

 them my honour that I'll do my best not to deceive their 

 trustful innocence. 



It may sound at first hearing a strange thing to say so, 

 but the whole of that vast gulf, from Turin to Venice, 

 has been entirely filled up within the human period by 

 the mud sheet brought down by mountain torrents from 

 the Alps and the Apennines. 



A parallel elsewhere will make this easier of belief. 

 You have looked down, no doubt, from the garden of the 

 hotel at Glion upon the lake of Geneva and the valley of 

 the Ehone about Villeneuve and Aigle. If so, you can 

 understand from personal knowledge the first great stage 

 in the mud-filling process ; for you must have observed 

 for yourself from that commanding height that the lake 

 once extended a great deal farther up country towards 

 Bex and St. Maurice than it does at present. You can 



K 



