2 64 
MOUNTAIN SLIDES. 
But for the intervention of man and domestic animals, these 
latter beneficent revolutions would occur more frequently, pro¬ 
ceed more rapidly. The new scarped mountains, the hillocks 
of debris, the plains elevated by sand and gravel spread over 
them, the shores freshly formed by fluviatile deposits, would 
clothe themselves with shrubs and trees, the intensity of the 
causes of degradation would be diminished, and nature would 
thus regain her ancient equilibrium. But these processes, 
under ordinary circumstances, demand, not years, generations,* 
but centuries; * and man, who even now finds scarce breathing 
room on this vast globe, cannot retire from the Old World to 
some yet undiscovered continent, and wait for the slow action 
of such causes to replace, by a new creation, the Eden he has 
wasted. 
Mountain Slides. 
I have said that the mountainous regions of the Atlantic 
States of the American Union are exposed to similar ravages, 
and I may add that there is, in some cases, reason to appre¬ 
hend from the same cause even more appalling calamities than 
those which I have yet described. The slide in the Notch of 
the White Mountains, by which the Willey family lost their 
lives, is an instance of the sort I refer to, though I am not able 
to say that in this particular case, the slip of the earth and 
Durance, a wooded declivity had been formed by the debris brought down 
by torrents, which had extinguished themselves after having swept off 
much of the superficial strata of the mountain of Morgon. “ All this dis¬ 
trict was covered with woods, which have now been thinned out and are 
perishing from day to day ; consequently, the torrents have recommenced 
their devastations, and if the clearings continue, this declivity, now fertile, 
will be ruined, like so many others.”—-Id., p. 155. 
* Where a torrent has not been long in operation, and earth still re¬ 
mains mixed with the rocks and gravel it heaps up at its point of eruption, 
vegetation often starts up and prospers, if protected from encroachment. 
In Provence, “ several communes determined, about ten years ago, to 
reserve the soils thus wasted, that is, to abandon them for a certain time, 
to spontaneous vegetation, which was not slow in making its appear¬ 
ance.”— Becquerei., jDcs Glimats , p. 315. 
