December 1, 1900.] 



KNOWLEDGE 



271 



ai-ise« in a populatiou which the Tm-kish Goveriuuent 

 is powerless to protect. The defenders of the public 

 peace are the very people who mcuace it. Each year 

 every sheik has to make treaties with the various nomad 

 tribes iu his vicinity, and engages to pay a lax called 

 el i/nii, " the brotherhood," the tribe thus becomes " the 

 sister," tl uktii, of the village. The sheik of the tribe 

 undertakes to respect the harvests, flocks, and possessions 

 of the peasants. The tax varies every year. The in- 

 habitants of Busra pay about £125 annually to seven 

 tribes. It was thus the Ivonians acted in regard to the 

 barbai'ians when they could not repel them ; they 

 assigned territories to them ujion the frontiers, paid 

 them a tax, set them against other barbarians, and dis- 

 guised this impotence by describing them under the 

 pompous title of " Friends and Allies of the Roniiui 

 People." 



These series of ai-ticles may be concludeU by giving 

 M. E. Demolins' summary of the social revolution accom- 

 plished by agricultm'e : — 



Corn is the necessary element for large agglomerar 



tions of men, for complicated societies. 

 It develops commerce and riches. 

 It modifies and complicates the conditions of 



cultivation. 

 It develops manufactures and transport. 

 It imposes on women their hardest work. 

 It transforms horses from steeds into beasts of 



burden and draught. 

 It brings about the complete substitution of a 



sedentary life for a nomad existence. 

 It renders the appropriation of the soil more per- 

 manent. 

 It further tends to restrict the number of pro- 

 prietors. 

 If it does not essentially modify the patinarclial 

 family it makes its working more difficult, and 

 leads to a selection among the heads of 

 families. 

 It causes the families to be less necessaxily self- 

 sufficing and to be more dependent on com- 

 merce. 

 It develops intellectual culture. 



It brings about a more frequent and intimate con- 

 tact between families belonging to different 

 beliefs and admits of the contact of dissidents. 

 It complicates the relations of neighbourhood by 



bringing residents and nomads face to face. 

 Lastly, it necessitates a greater development of 

 government. 



THE HEART OF DAUPHINE. 



By Grenville A. J. Cole, m.r.i.a., f.g.s., Professor of 

 Geology in the Royal College of Science for Ireland. 



The traveller may leave the busy line that thunders 

 with the trains from Paris to Tuiin, may step into the 

 Piedmont highlands at the little station of Oulx, and 

 there, doubting if he is in France or Italy, may walk 

 up ten miles to the col at Mont^Genevre. The road 

 climbs above the vegetation of the valley, high upon 

 the talus of the hills; the rocks i-ise in crags and 

 pinnacles, the outposts of a weird and broken region to 

 the south, where the canons lie brown and bare below 

 him, like a scene in rainless Colorado. But at the pass 

 he finds the patch of Alpine mejulows, the chalets with 

 their overhanging eaves, and the little inn with that 

 hospitable inscription, a true motto of the frontier, " Le 



soleil luit pour louL lo uioudc." Ou his left stands 

 Fort Janus, grim u])on its limestone crag; but his eyes 

 look beyond it, to where, in llie west, a serrated mass of 

 snow-peaks towers in the middle air. 



The stranger thinks of his map of Europe, but still 

 ;usks himself, "What ai'e these T' If ho is one of the 

 few thousands who honestly believe Mont Blanc to be 

 in Switzerland, he is all the moro surprised and fas- 

 cinated. He is facing France, a land of plains and 

 plateaux; what ai'o these giants that arise autl bar his 

 progress ? 



We ai'e, in fact, nearing the granite knot of Dauphine, 

 that self-contained group of Alpine summits known as 

 the massif of tlio Pclvoux. It is an incident on the 

 great curve of the Western Alps, which runs from Nice 

 to Chamouix ; the Grandes Mousses, the mountains 

 of Modanc, the Grande Sassiere, and the Ruitor, all 

 traversing the snow-line, connect the Pelvoux with the 

 massif of Mont Blanc. The axis of the range then bends 

 eastward, giving us the Matlcrhorn and Monte Rosa. 



The summits of the Pelvoux are by no means to be 

 desjjised. Some, at least, of our own climbers have made 

 their mark upon them, and the fact is recorded by the 

 " abri Tuckett " and the " Pic Coolidge " on the maps 

 of the French Government.* La Barrc des Ecrins, with 

 its 4103 metres (13,400 feet), the beautiful peak of the 

 Mcijet (3987 metres), the Pelvoux itself (3954 metres), 

 give us some idea of the dignity of the mass. Like most 

 of the giants of the Alpine chain, tiicse owe their pro- 

 minence to the intrusive granite which has consolidated 

 the mountain core, binding together the old schists into 

 which it penetrates, and weathering out ultimately into 

 pink-brown pinnacles and spires. 



Wo see something of the inner structure of the massif, 

 if, approaching it from the west, we leave the stratified 

 hillsides of Bourg-d'Oisans, and enter the first gi-im 

 ravine. The route nationale from Grenoble to Briau9on 

 here attacks the mountains by the deep channel of the 

 Romanche. The huge jsrecipices give us sections that 

 are more convincing than the cleai'cst diagrams of a 

 lecture-room. The schists and gneisses are seen to be 

 traversed by p;Uo veins of granite and aplite.| Many 

 of the old rocks may have been crystalline at the time 

 of this intrusion ; but the intimate penetration of the 

 granite among them has converted many of the milder 

 types also into gneiss. The white veins of the invader, 

 conspicuous on the cliff that rises from the torrent, form 

 bands many feet across; the fragments that may be 

 picked up from the surface of the road show the same 

 features in miniature, and beai- witness to the complete- 

 ness of the intermingling. Wherever the schists are 

 thus seamed with igneous matter rich in silica, the main 

 mass of the Pelvoux granite lies at no great distance 

 from us. 



We look up, and see green meadows, and the remote 

 hamlet of Auris, occupying the very summit of the cliff. 

 Here the Mesozoic strata lie across the upturned edges 

 of the schists; and patches and infolds of them, Trias 

 and Lias for the most part, occm- even in the massif 

 of the Pelvoux. Though attained only by zig-zag mule- 



* CooliAge, Alpine Journal, Vol. V., p. 128; Tol. VII., p. 136; 

 Vol. IX., p. 121 ; F. Gardiner, ibid., Vol. VII., p. 80. 



+ First climbed by M. Castlonau ; see Alpine Journal, Vol. VIIT., 

 p. .328. On its dillicidtios and general cbaracter.s, see H. 0-. Gotch, 

 lAirf., Vol. VIII., p. 177. 



X Compare W. ICiliiui, " .41pei dii Dauphine cfcMout lilanc," p. 22, 

 and M. P. Tenniur, "Massif du Pelvoux et Briancjonnais, pp. 12, 21, 

 &c. (Livret-guido des excursions en France du viiie. eongris geol. 

 internat, 1900). 



