240 
TORRENTS IN FRANCE. 
to tlie damage caused by brooks and torrents, it is impossible 
to deny its extent Upper Provence is in danger of total de¬ 
struction, and the waters which lay it waste threaten also the 
ruin of the most valuable grounds on the plain below. Vil¬ 
lages have been almost submerged by torrents which formerly 
had not even names, and large towns are on the point of 
destruction from the same cause.’ ” 
In 1776, Viscount Puget thus reported : “ The mere aspect 
of Upper Provence is calculated to appal the patriotic magis¬ 
trate. One sees only lofty mountains, deep valleys with pre¬ 
cipitous sides, rivers with broad beds and little water, impet¬ 
uous torrents, which in floods lay waste the cultivated land 
upon their banks and roll huge rocks along their channels; 
steep and parched hillsides, the melancholy consequences of 
indiscriminate clearing ; villages whose inhabitants, finding no 
longer the means of subsistence, are emigrating day by day; 
houses dilapidated to huts, and but a miserable remnant of 
population.” 
u In a document of the year 1771, the ravages of the tor¬ 
rents were compared to the effects of an earthquake, half the 
soil in many communes seeming to have been swallowed up. 
“ Our mountains,” said the administrators of the province 
of the Lower Alps in 1792, “ present nothing but a surface of 
stony tufa ; clearing is still going on, and the little rivulets are 
becoming torrents. Many communes have lost their harvests, 
their flocks, and their houses by floods. The washing down 
of the mountains is to be ascribed to the clearings and the 
practice of burning them over.” 
These complaints, it will be seen, all date before the Revo¬ 
lution, but the desolation they describe has since advanced 
with still swifter steps. 
Surell—whose valuable work, Etude sur les Torrents 
des Ilautes Alpes , published in 1841, presents the most appall¬ 
ing picture of the desolations of the torrent, and, at the same 
time, the most careful studies of the history and essential char¬ 
acter of this great evil—in speaking of the valley of Devoluy, 
on page 152, says : “ Everything concurs to show that it was 
