248 
ACTION OF TORRENTS. 
Highly colored as these pictures seem, they are not exag¬ 
gerated, although the hasty tourist through Southern France 
and Northern Italy, finding little in his high road experiences 
to justify them, might suppose them so. The lines of communi¬ 
cation by locomotive train and diligence lead generally over 
safer ground, and it is only when they ascend the Alpine 
passes and traverse the mountain chains, that scenes somewhat 
resembling those just described fall under the eye of the ordi¬ 
nary traveller. But the extension of the sphere of devastation, 
by the degradation of the mountains and the transportation 
of their debris, is producing analogous effects upon the lower 
ridges of the Alps and the plains which skirt them; and even 
now one needs but an hour’s departure from some great thor¬ 
oughfares to reach sites where the genius of destruction rev els 
as wildly as in the most frightful of the abysses which Blanqui 
has painted.* 
in tlie provinces of the plains, where all the principal cities are found. In 
these provinces the increase was 204,000, while in the mountain provinces 
there was a diminution of 103,000. The reduction of the area of arable 
land is perhaps even more striking. In 1842, the department of the Lower 
Alps possessed 99,000 hectares, or nearly 245,000 acres, of cultivated soil. 
In 1852, it had but 74,000 hectares. In other words, in ten years 25,000 
hectares, or 61,000 acres, had been washed away or rendered worthless 
for cultivation, by torrents and the abuses of pasturage. —Clave, Etudes, 
pp. 66, 67. 
* The Skalara-Tobel, for instance, near Coire. See the description in 
Berlepsch, Die Alpen , pp. 169 et seqq, or in Stephen’s English translation. 
The recent change in the character of the Mella—a river anciently so 
remarkable for the gentleness of its current that it was specially noticed 
by Catullus as flowing molli flumine —deserves more than a passing 
remark. This river rises in the mountain chain east of Lake Iseo, and 
traversing the district of Brescia, empties into the Oglio after, a course of 
about seventy miles. The iron works in the upper valley of the Mella had 
long created a considerable demand for wood, but their operations were 
not so extensive as to occasion any very sudden or general destruction of 
the forests, and the only evil experienced from the clearings was the grad¬ 
ual diminution of the volume of the river. Within the last twenty years, 
the superior quality of the arms manufactured at Brescia has greatly en¬ 
larged the sale of them, and very naturally stimulated the activity of both 
the forges and of the colliers who supply them, and the hillsides have been 
