These complaints, it will be seen, all date before the Revolution, but the desolation they describe has since advanced with still swifter steps.
Surell—whose valuable work, Étude sur les Torrents des Hautes Alpes, published in 1841, presents the most appalling picture of the desolations of the torrent, and, at the same time, the most careful studies of the history and essential character of this great evil—in speaking of the valley of Dévoluy, on page 152, says: "Everything concurs to show that it was anciently wooded. In its peat bogs are found buried trunks of trees, monuments of its former vegetation. In the framework of old houses, one sees enormous timber, which is no longer to be found in the district. Many localities, now completely bare, still retain the name of 'wood,' and one of them is called, in old deeds, Comba nigra [Black forest or dell], on account of its dense woods. These and many other proofs confirm the local traditions which are unanimous on this point.
"There, as everywhere in the Upper Alps, the clearings began on the flanks of the mountains, and were gradually extended into the valleys and then to the highest accessible peaks. Then followed the Revolution, and caused the destruction of the remainder of the trees which had thus far escaped the woodman's axe."
In a note to this passage, the writer says: "Several persons have told me that they had lost flocks of sheep, by straying, in the forests of Mont Auroux, which covered the flanks of the mountain from La Cluse to Agnères. These declivities are now as bare as the palm of the hand."
The ground upon the steep mountains being once bared of trees, and the underwood killed by the grazing of horned cattle, sheep, and goats, every depression becomes a watercourse. "Every storm," says Surell, page 153, "gives rise to a new torrent. Examples of such are shown, which, though not yet three years old, have laid waste the finest fields of their valleys, and whole villages have narrowly escaped being swept into ravines formed in the course of a few hours. Sometimes the flood pours in a sheet over the surface, without ravine or even bed, and ruins extensive grounds, which are abandoned forever."
I cannot follow Surell in his description and classification of torrents, and I must refer the reader to his instructive work for a full exposition of the theory of the subject. In order, however, to show what a concentration of destructive energies may be effected by felling the woods that clothe and support the sides of mountain abysses, I cite his description of a valley descending from the Col Isoard, which he calls "a complete type of a basin of reception," that is, a gorge which serves as a common point of accumulation and discharge for the waters of several lateral torrents. "The aspect of the monstrous channel," says he, "is frightful. Within a distance of less than three kilomètres [= one mile and seven eighths English], more than sixty torrents hurl into the depths of the gorge the debris torn from its two flanks. The smallest of these secondary torrents, if transferred to a fertile valley, would be enough to ruin it."
The eminent political economist Blanqui, in a memoir read before the Academy of Moral and Political Science on the 25th of November, 1843, thus expresses himself: "Important as are the causes of impoverishment already described, they are not to be compared to the consequences which have followed from the two inveterate evils of the Alpine provinces of France, the extension of clearing and the ravages of torrents. * * The most important result of this destruction is this: that the agricultural capital, or rather the ground itself—which, in a rapidly increasing degree, is daily swept away by the waters—is totally lost. Signs of unparalleled destitution are visible in all the mountain zone, and the solitudes of those districts are assuming an indescribable character of sterility and desolation. The gradual destruction of the woods has, in a thousand localities, annihilated at once the springs and the fuel. Between Grenoble and Briançon in the valley of the Romanche, many villages are so destitute of wood that they are reduced to the necessity of baking their bread with sun-dried cowdung, and even this they can afford to do but once a year. This bread becomes so hard that it can be cut only with an axe, and I have myself seen a loaf of bread in September, at the kneading of which I was present the January previous.
"Whoever has visited the valley of Barcelonette, those of Embrun, and of Verdun, and that Arabia Petræa of the department of the Upper Alps, called Dévoluy, knows that there is no time to lose, that in fifty years from this date France will be separated from Savoy, as Egypt from Syria, by a desert."[218]
It deserves to be specially noticed that the district here referred to, though now among the most hopelessly waste in France, was very productive even down to so late a period as the commencement of the French Revolution. Arthur Young, writing in 1789, says: "About Barcelonette and in the highest parts of the mountains, the hill pastures feed a million of sheep, besides large herds of other cattle;" and he adds: "With such a soil, and in such a climate we are not to suppose a country barren because it is mountainous. The valleys I have visited are, in general, beautiful."[219] He ascribes the same character to the provinces of Dauphiny, Provence, and Auvergne, and, though he visited, with the eye of an attentive and practised observer, many of the scenes since blasted with the wild desolation described by Blanqui, the Durance and a part of the course of the Loire are the only streams he mentions as inflicting serious injury by their floods. The ravages of the torrents had, indeed, as we have seen, commenced earlier in some other localities, but we are authorized to infer that they were, in Young's time, too limited in range, and relatively too insignificant, to require notice in a general view of the provinces where they have now ruined so large a proportion of the soil.
But I resume my citations.