136 LITBBATUBE ON TORKBNTS. 



before remarked, I have taken tay illustrations of the aotio'n of torrents tod 

 mountain streams principally from French authorities, because the facts 

 recorded by them are chiefly of recent occurrence, and as they have been 

 collected with much care and described with great fulness of detail, the 

 information furnished by them is not only more trustworthy, but both more 

 complete and more accessible than that which can be gathered frbmany 

 other source. It is not to be supposed, however, that the countries sldjacent 

 to France have escaped the consequences of a like improvidence. The 

 southern flanks of the Alps, and, in a less degree, the northern slope of 

 these mountains and the whole chain of the Pyrenees, afford equally 

 striking examples of the evils resulting from the wanton sacrifice of nature's 

 safeguards. But I can afford space for few details, and as an illustration of 

 the extent of these evils in Italy, I shall barely observe that it was calcula- 

 ted ten years ago that four-tenths of the area of the Ligurian provinces had 

 been washed away or rendered incapable of cultivation in consequence of 

 the felling of the woods. 



" Highly coloured as these pictures seem, they are not exaggerated, 

 although the hasty tourist through Southern France, Switzerland, ■ the 

 Tyrol, and Northern Italy, finding little in his high-road experiences to 

 justify them, might suppose them so. The lines of communication by 

 locomotive-train and diligence lead generally over safer ground, and it is 

 only when they ascend the Alpine passes and traverse the mountain chains, 

 that scenes somewhat resembling those just described fall under the eye of 

 the ordinary traveller. But the extension of the sphere of devastation, by 

 the degradation of the mountains and the transportation of the debris, is 

 producing analogous effects upon the lower ridges of the Alps and the plains 

 which skirt them ; and even now one needs but an hour's departure from 

 some great thoroughfares to reach sites where the genius of destruction 

 revels as wildly as in some of the most frightful of the abysses which 

 Blanqui has painted." 



" According to Arthur Young," who travelled in France Italy, and Spain, 

 in 1789, says Marsh, " on the lower Po, where the surface of the river at 

 high water has been elevated considerably above the level of the adjacent 

 fields by diking, the peasants in his time frequently endeavoured to secure 

 their grounds against threatened devastation through the bursting of the 

 dikes, by crossing the river when the danger became imminent and opening 

 a cut in the opposite bank, thus saving their own property by flooding their 

 neighbours'. He adds, that at high-water the navigation of the river was 

 absolutely interdicted, except to mail and passenger boats, and that the 

 guards fired upon all others ; the object of the prohibition being to prevent 

 the peasants from resorting to this measure of self-defence." 



Streffleur quotes from Duile the following observations : " The channel of 

 the Tyrolese brooks is often raised much above the valleys through which 

 they flow. The bed of the Fersina is elevated high above the city of Trent, 

 which lies near it. The Villerbach flows at a much more elevated level 

 than that of the market-place of Neumarkt and Vill, and threatens to 

 overwhelm both of them with its waters. The Talfer at Botzen is at least 

 even with the roofs of the adjacent town, if not above them. The tower- 

 steeples of the villages of Schlanders, Kortsch, and Laas, are lower than the 

 surface of the Gadribach. The Saldurbach, at Schluderns, menaces the far 

 lower vUlage with destruction, and the chief town, Schwaa, is in similar 

 danger from the Lahnbach," 



