298 DEVASTATIONS AND EBST0BATI0N8. 



scarcely anything but clean shaven mountains, the flanks of which are 

 furrowed by numerous ravines, which go on digging themselves year by 

 year ; in winter the snow is heaped up, and holds the country exposed to 

 formidable avalanches ; in summer every storm of rain transforms them into 

 torrents, the dejection of which collect in heaps at the foot of the valley, 

 lay waste the meadows, and obstruct the roads. 



" The spot most seriously threatened is the burgh town of Bareges, a 

 hamlet of the commune of Betpouey, situated 6500 metres from Luz, at 

 an elevation of 1232 metres above the level of the sea. 



" It is generally known that Bareges has within its bounds sulphurous 

 springs, which are justly renowned, and to which come numerous patients 

 in quest of a remedy for their sufferings. The valley people have erected 

 there baths of a monumental appearance ; the Minister of War has caused 

 to be erected an extensive and beautiful military hospital; and a civil 

 hospice has recently been erected. 



" These are the only important erections which can be spoken of. A.t 

 Bareges the dwelling-houses have nothing of the comfort and elegance seen 

 at most of the fashionable hot-springs. Hotels and private houses have a 

 poor and pitiful aspect, which need not excite surprise, if one considers for 

 a moment that the shock of an avalanche may destroy from the foundation, 

 and lay in heaps, an edifice erected at great expense. Bareges, moreover, 

 is during the winter inhabited only by some forest-guards, and a few 

 individuals left in charge of the public and private buildings. The thermal 

 season lasts from the 1st of June to the 30th September ; when that is 

 over, all the tradesmen, and others, who depend on visitors and their 

 requirements for a livelihood, hasten to close up carefully their dwellings, 

 barricade the doors and windows with planks and beams, and make off for 

 the plains. And one peculiarity is to be noted — all the shops erected in the 

 vicinity of the military hospital- are wooden erections, set up in spring and 

 taken down in autumn, lest an avalanche should come and carry them away. 



" It appears as if every moment were spent in Bareges in the considera- 

 tion of means of protecting the place against the action of the snow and of 

 the waters, and thus does it appear to have been long. 



"Thus in 1594 the Conseils of the valley interdicted the felling of trees 

 there. 



" On the 6th May 1732 a resolution of the Council of State made it 

 expressly forbidden, under paijn of corporal punishment, to cut or lay waste 

 the trees and woods which surround the hamlet of Bareges, and protected 

 it against ravines. 



" A decree of the 90th Prairial an XII. renewed these prohibitions, and 

 charged the prefect to propose to the Government any measures which he 

 might believe would be useful to prevent the formation of ravines and 

 avalanches. 



" On the 22nd February 1815, a resolution of the prefect of the High 

 Pyrenees, approved by the Minister of the Interior, determined the measures 

 to be taken to prove infractions of the decree, and to put an end to them. 



" In 1839 M. de Verdal, captain of military engineers at Lourdes, pro- 

 posed to construct in the ravine of Theil — that which threatened, more 

 particularly, the hospital and the baths — a system of stone dikes. 



" About the same time, Major Itiet, of the 5th Regiment of Chasseurs cb 

 Cheval, devoted his leisure to the study of the same subject, and submitted 

 a measure deserving of consideration, in which he gave an exposition of the 



