238 
TORRENTS IN FRANCE. 
earth, and gravel with which it was charged. - * At a latei* 
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 ter¬ 
racing and irrigation. The forests which covered the moun¬ 
tains 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 correspondingly 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 con- 
* "Whether Palissy was acquainted with this ancient practice, or 
whether it was one of those original suggestions of which his works are 
so full, I know not; hut in his treatise, Des Faux et Fontaines , he thus 
recommends it, by way of reply to the objections of “Theorique,” who 
had expressed the fear that “the waters which rush violently down from 
the heights of the mountain would bring with them much earth, sand, and 
other things,” and thus spoil the artificial fountain that “ Practique ” was 
teaching him to make: “ And for hindrance of the mischiefs of great 
waters which may be gathered in few hours by great storms, when thou 
shalt have made ready thy parterre to receive the water, thou must lay 
great stones athwart the deep channels which lead to thy parterre. And 
so the force of the rushing currents shall be deadened, and thy water shall 
flow peacefully into his cisterns .”—(Euvres Completes , p. 173. 
