246 
TORRENTS IN FRANCE. 
a bush can be found to shelter a bird, where, at most, the 
wanderer sees in summer here and there a withered lavender, 
where all the springs are dried up, and where a dead silence, 
hardly broken by even the hum of an insect, prevails. But if 
a storm bursts forth, masses of water suddenly shoot from the 
mountain heights into the shattered gulfs, waste without irri¬ 
gating, deluge without refreshing the soil they overflow in 
their swift descent, and leave it even more seared than it was 
from want of moisture. Man at last retires from the fearful 
desert, and I have, the present season, found not a living soul 
in districts where I remember to have enjoyed hospitality 
thirty years ago.” 
In 1853, ten years after the date of Blanqui’s memoir, M. 
de Bonville, prefect of the Lower Alps, addressed to the Gov¬ 
ernment a report in which the following passages occur : 
u It is certain that the productive mould of the Alps, swept 
off by the increasing violence of that curse of the mountains, 
the torrents, is daily diminishing with fearful rapidity. All 
our Alps are wholly, or in large proportion, bared of wood. 
Their soil, scorched by the sun of Provence, cut up by the 
hoofs of the sheep, which, not finding on the surface the grass 
they require for their sustenance, scratch the ground in search 
of roots to satisfy their hunger, is periodically washed and car¬ 
ried off by melting snows and summer storms. 
“ I will not dwell on the effects of the torrents. For sixty 
years they have been too often depicted to require to be 
further discussed, but it is important to show that their rav¬ 
ages are daily extending the range of devastation. The bed 
of the Durance, which now in some places exceeds 2,000 
metres [about 6,600 feet, or a mile and a quarter] in width, 
and, at ordinary times, has a current of water less than 10 
metres [about 33 feet] wide, shows something of the extent of 
the damage.* Where, ten years ago, there were still woods 
* In the days of the Eoman empire the Durance was a navigable river, 
with a commerce so important that the boatmen upon it formed a distinct 
corporation. —Ladoucette, Jlistoire , etc., des Hautes Alpes, p. 354. 
Even as early as 1789, the Durance was computed to have already 
