232 
DANGER OF TORRENTS IN THE UNITED STATES. 
grounds, and abundant cornfields and vineyards well watered 
by springs and fertilizing rivulets, to bald mountain ridges, 
rocky declivities, and steep earth banks furrowed by deep 
ravines with beds now dry, now filled by torrents of fluid 
mud and gravel hurrying down to spread themselves over the 
plain, and dooming to everlasting barrenness the once produc¬ 
tive fields. In traversing such scenes, it is difficult to resist 
the impression that nature pronounced the curse of perpetual 
sterility and desolation upon these sublime but fearful wastes, 
difficult to believe that they were once, and but for the folly 
of man might still be, blessed with all the natural advantages 
which Providence has bestowed upon the most favored climes. 
But the historical evidence is conclusive as to the destructive 
changes occasioned by the agency of man upon the flanks of 
the Alps, the Apennines, the Pyrenees, and other mountain 
ranges in Central and Southern Europe, and the progress of 
physical deterioration has been so rapid that, in some local¬ 
ities, a single generation has witnessed the beginning and the 
end of the melancholy revolution. 
It is certain that a desolation, like that which has over¬ 
whelmed many once beautiful and fertile regions of Europe, 
awaits an important part of the territory of the United States, 
and of other comparatively new countries over which European 
civilization is now extending its sway, unless prompt measures 
are taken to check the action of destructive causes already in 
operation. It is vain to expect that legislation can do any¬ 
thing effectual to arrest the progress of the evil in those coun¬ 
tries, except so far as the state is still the proprietor of exten¬ 
sive forests. Woodlands which have passed into private hands 
will everywhere be managed, in spite of legal restrictions, upon 
the same economical principles as other possessions, and every 
proprietor will, as a general rule, fell his woods, unless he 
believes that it will be for his pecuniary interest to preserve 
them. Few of the new provinces which the last three cen¬ 
turies have brought under the control of the European race, 
would tolerate any interference by the law-making power with 
what they regard as the most sacred of civil rights—the right, 
