which, if placed in other districts, would be sought after, and cited as types of daring form and graceful outline.
Not so very long ago, perhaps, the Vallon des Etançons wore a more cheerful aspect. It is well known that many of the French Alpine valleys have rapidly deteriorated in quite modern times. Blanqui pointed out, a few years ago, some of the causes which have brought this about, in an address to the Academy of Sciences; and although his remarks are not entirely applicable to this very valley, the chapter may be properly closed with some of his vigorous sentences. He said, "The abuse of the right of pasturage, and the felling of the woods, have stripped the soil of all its grass and all its trees, and the scorching sun bakes it to the consistence of porphyry. When moistened by the rain, as it has neither support nor cohesion, it rolls down into the valleys, sometimes in floods resembling black, yellow, or reddish lava, and sometimes in streams of pebbles, and even huge blocks of stone, which pour down with a frightful roar. . . . Vast deposits of flinty pebbles, many feet in thickness, which have rolled down and spread far over the plain, surround large trees, bury even their tops, and rise above them. . . . The gorges, under the influence of the sun which cracks and shivers to fragments the very rocks, and of the rain which sweeps them down, penetrate deeper and deeper into the heart of the mountain, while the beds of the torrents issuing from them are sometimes raised several feet in a single year by the débris. . . . An indirect proof of the increase of the evil is to be found in the depopulation of the country. . . . Unless prompt and energetic measures are taken, it is easy to fix the epoch when the French Alps will be but a desert Every year will aggravate the evil, and in half-a-century France will count more ruins, and a department the less."[1]
- ↑ Quoted from Marsh's Man and Nature.
