268 DEVASTATIONS AND EEST0EATI0N8. 



permitted a slow escape of the water, but compelled it to deposit above the 

 dikes the earth and gravel with which it was charged. At a later period 

 the Crusaders brought home from Palestine, with much other knowledge 

 gathered from the wiser Moslems, the art of securing the hillsides and 

 making them productive by terracing and irrigation. The forests which 

 covered the mountains secured an abundant flow of springs, and the process 

 of clearing the soil went on so slowly that, for centuries, neither the want 

 of timber and fuel, nor the other evils about to be depicted, were seriously 

 felt. Indeed, throughout the Middle Ages, these provinces were well 

 wooded, and famous for the fertility and abundance, not only of the low- 

 grounds, but of the hills. 



" Such was the state of things at the close of the fifteenth century. The 

 statistics of the seventeenth show that while there had been an increase of 

 prosperity and population in Lower Provence, as well as in the corres- 

 pondingly situated parts of the other two provinces I have mentioned, there 

 was an alarming decrease both in the wealth and in the population of Upper 

 Provence and Dauphiny, although, by the clearing of the forests, a great 

 extent of plough-land and pasturage had been added to the soil before 

 reduced to cultivation. It was found, in fact, that the augmented violence 

 of the torrents had swept away, or buried in sand and gravel, more land 

 than had been reclaimed by clearing ; and the taxes computed by fires or 

 habitations underwent several successive reductions in consequence of the 

 gradual abandonment of the wasted soil by its starving occupants. The 

 growth of the large towns on and near the Ehone and the coast, their 

 advance in commerce and industry, and the consequently enlarged demand 

 for agricultural products, ought naturally to have increased the rural 

 population and the value of their lands ; but the physical decay of the up- 

 lands was such that considerable tracts were deserted altogether, and in 

 Upper Provence, the fires which in 1471 counted 897, were reduced to 747 

 in 1699, to 728 in 1733, and to 635 in 1776." 



As an example and illustration of what has been done in the department 

 of the Isfere, to the north of the High Alps and of the department of 

 Dr6me, I take at hap-hazard the monagraph given by the Forest Adminis- 

 tration on the works executed in the p^rimfetre of the Bourg-d'Oisans : — 



" The territory of the Bourg-d'Oisans has been formed by the union of 

 the two communes, formerly distinct, of the Bourg-d'Oisans and of Gau- 

 choirs ; it lies with a geperal exposure to the northeast, and comprises two 

 distinct valleys, which meet at the confluence of the V6n6on and the 

 Eomanche ; the one (Bourg-d'Oisans) is throughout a cultivated plain of 

 an average extent of 3 kilometres, or nearly 2 miles, traversed by the 

 Eomanche throughout its entire length, and includes all the escarpments 

 which overlook it on the southeast to an altitude of 1800 mfetres, or 6000 

 feet ; the other (the Gauohoirs) lies on the left bank of the V6n6on, and 

 extends to the upper ridge of the mountains, the dominating peaks of which 

 attain a height of 2900 metres, or upwards of 10,000 feet. The slopes of 

 the mountainous region of the territory present abrupt declivities of from 45 

 to 60 degrees ; with the exception of the dominal forest of Eiou-P6roux, 

 and of some masses of resinous trees of no great extent, they are entirely 

 denuded and furrowed by numerous ravines, amongst which may be 

 mentioned the ton-ent of Saiut-Antoine. 



" This torrent has hollowed out for itself a vast notch in the very flank 



