MUD, 133 



by successive zigzags over the mountains to Menaggio. 

 Similarly the influx of the Adda at the upper end of 

 Como has cut off the Lago di Mezzola from the main 

 lake, and has formed the alluvial level that stretches so 

 drearily all around Colico. Slowly the mud fiend 

 encroaches everywhere on the lakes ; and if you look for 

 him when you go there you can see him actually at 

 work every spring under your very eyes, piling up fresh 

 banks and deltas with alarming industry, and preparing 

 (in a few hundred thousand years) to ruin the tourist 

 trade of Cadenabbia and Bellagio. 



If we turn from the lakes themselves to the Lombard 

 plain at large, which is an immensely older and larger 

 basin, we see traces of the same action on a vastly 

 greater scale. A glance at the map will show the 

 intelligent and ever courteous reader that the 'wander- 

 ing Po ' I drop into poetry after Goldsmith flows 

 much nearer the foot of the Apennines than of the Alps 

 in the course of its divagations, and seems purposely to 

 bend away from the greater range of mountains. Why 

 is this, since everything in nature must needs have a 

 reason ? Well, it is because, when the mud first began 

 to accumulate in the old Lombard bay of the Adriatic, 

 there was no Po at all, whether wandering or otherwise: 

 the big river has slowly grown up in time by the union 

 of the lateral torrents that pour down from either side, 

 as the growth of the mud flat brought them gradually 

 together. Careful study of a good map will show how 

 this has happened, especially if it has the plains and 

 mountains distinctively tinted after the excellent 

 German fashion. The Ticino, the Adda, the Mincio, 



