TOEBBNTS OP THE HIGH ALPS. 31 



" The site of tte market town of Savines may be adduced, amongst others, 

 as a very remarkable example of this kind of formation. The whole town, 

 along with a part of its fields, stands on a bed of ejected deposit, the breadth 

 of which exceeds 1500 mtoes, upwards of a mile, coYering fields once of 

 great fertility. The nature of this ground is no more doubtful than is its 

 origin. It has been excavated to its greatest depth in digging foundations 

 and in sinking several of the wells in the town ; and the drains of a highway 

 lately put in order have disembowelled it in all directions. Below that town 

 the Durance has cut out a channel and bed on some banks more than 

 70 feet in height, which forms a sort of natural cutting across the bed. 

 It surmounts and overlooks the whole place, and towards the west, at the 

 extremity of the town, there flows the stream by which aU the deposits 

 have been produced ; this is confined between high banks adorned with 

 meadows, and flows deep down in its own earlier alluvial deposits. 



" It is thus open to the day on all sides, and may be studied with the 

 greatest ease. Everywhere it is composed of rolled stones, agglutinated by 

 a lime-like mud. This pudding-like matter is spread in regular beds 

 parallel to the curvature of the surface. It becomes harder and coarser as 

 we get further down, and ends in forming a very compact mass. As to the 

 characteristic form, it may be distinguished from a distance, especially on the 

 east side. The town is built on the highest portion, and the fields lie scat- 

 tered around it. In the background rises the mountain, Le Morgon, in *hich 

 the basin of reception is covered or buried now under black forests of firs. 



" It may be remarked that the extinction of this torrent, although of 

 a very old date — dating as it does from a time beyond the memory of man 

 — must nevertheless have occurred after the first establishment of human 

 habitations in this mountain range, for hearth-stones and lumps of charcoal 

 have been disinterred from great depths in the pudding-like mass. These 

 fragments show that men had been then in the locality while, anterior to 

 historical times, the torrent in full action was making this bed of deposit ; 

 and the name of the stream seems to indicate that the stream must have 

 retained its violent character till times less remote from our own." In a 

 note it is stated it is called Branafet, which seems to be a corruption of 

 Bramafam, Howling Hunger, a name already mentioned as common to many 

 torrents; and it seems as if in losing its violence it had lost also the name 

 which spoke of it. 



" The details mentioned leave no doubt in regard either to the fact or to 

 the interpretation put upon it ; and they are applicable, not to a single 

 isolated case, but to an order of things which is quite general, the examples 

 of which are widespread, and would each of them furnish materials for 

 observations precisely similar. Names are given in a note of several, with 

 references to more. It must therefore be admitted as an established fact, 

 that the violence of torrents is not of interminable duration, but that it 

 may be arrested — be it by the accomplishment of a definite efiect, or be it 

 that the torrent has been brought under some influence by which it has 

 been stifled. 



" The torrents which present these features are probably the most ancient. 

 To render this conjecture more probable, I proceed by a bound to the 

 opposite end of the scale. We find villages standing in the place where 

 torrents in full action debouch from the mountains. Thus is it with Les 

 Croties, and with the market-town of Chorges. It is most probable that 

 these towns were built where they stand before the torrents by which they 



