Part 31 (1/2)
This pa.s.sage is also of interest as showing that soaking in salt water, as a mode of seasoning, was practised in Harrison's time.
But the importation of wainscot, or boards for ceiling, panelling, and otherwise finis.h.i.+ng rooms, which was generally of oak, commenced three centuries before the time of Harrison. On page 204 of the _Liber Albus_--a book which could have been far more valuable if the editor had given us the texts, with his learned notes, instead of a translation--mention is made of ”squared oak timber,” brought in from the country by carts, and of course of domestic growth, as free of city duty or octroi, and of ”planks of oak” coming in in the same way as paying one plank a cartload. But in the chapter on the ”Customs of Billyngesgate,” pp. 208, 209, relating to goods imported from foreign countries, a duty of one halfpenny is imposed on every hundred of boards called ”weynscotte,” and of one penny on every hundred of boards called ”Rygholt.” The editor explains ”Rygholt” as ”wood of Riga.” This was doubtless pine or fir. The year in which these provisions were made does not appear, but they belong to the reign of Henry III.
[211] In a letter addressed to the Minister of Public Works, after the terrible inundations of 1857, the Emperor thus happily expressed himself: ”Before we seek the remedy for an evil, we inquire into its cause. Whence come the sudden floods of our rivers? From the water which falls on the mountains, not from that which falls on the plains. The waters which fall on our fields produce but few rivulets, but those which fall on our roofs and are collected in the gutters, form small streams at once. Now, the roofs are mountains--the gutters are valleys.”
”To continue the comparison,” observes D'Hericourt, ”roofs are smooth and impermeable, and the rain water pours rapidly off from their surfaces; but this rapidity of flow would be greatly diminished if the roofs were carpeted with mosses and gra.s.ses; more still, if they were covered with dry leaves, little shrubs, strewn branches, and other impediments--in short, if they were wooded.”--_Annales Forestieres, Dec._, 1857, p. 311.
[212] ”The roots of vegetables,” says D'Hericourt, ”perform the office of a perpendicular drainage a.n.a.logous to that which has been practised with success in Holland and in some parts of the British Islands. This system consists in driving down three or four thousand stakes upon a hectare; the rain water filters down along the stakes, and, in certain cases, as favorable results are obtained by this method as by horizontal drains.”--_Annales Forestieres_, 1857, p. 312.
[213] The productiveness of Egypt has been attributed too exclusively to the fertilizing effects of the slime deposited by the inundations of the Nile; for in that climate a liberal supply of water would produce good crops on almost any ordinary sand, while, without water, the richest soil would yield nothing. The sediment deposited annually is but a very small fraction of an inch in thickness. It is alleged that in quant.i.ty it would be hardly sufficient for a good top dressing, and that in quality it is not chemically distinguishable from the soil inches or feet below the surface. But to deny, as some writers have done, that the slime has any fertilizing properties at all, is as great an error as the opposite one of ascribing all the agricultural wealth of Egypt to that single cause of productiveness. Fine soils deposited by water are almost uniformly rich in all climates; those brought down by rivers, carried out into salt water, and then returned again by the tide, seem to be more permanently fertile than any others. The polders of the Netherland coast are of this character, and the meadows in Lincolns.h.i.+re, which have been covered with slime by _warping_, as it is called, or admitting water over them at high tide, are remarkably productive. See _Appendix_, No. 28.
[214] ”The laws against clearing have never been able to prevent these operations when the proprietor found his advantage in them, and the long series of royal ordinances and decrees of parliaments, proclaimed from the days of Charlemagne to our own, with a view of securing forest property, have served only to show the impotence of legislative notion on this subject.”--CLAVe, _etudes sur l'economie Forestiere_, p. 32.
”A proprietor can always contrive to clear his woods, whatever may be done to prevent him; it is a mere question of time, and a few imprudent cuttings, a few abuses of the right of pasturage, suffice to destroy a forest in spite of all regulations to the contrary.”--DUNOYER, _De la Liberte du Travail_, ii, p. 452, as quoted by Clave, p. 353.
Both authors agree that the preservation of the forests in France is practicable only by their transfer to the state, which alone can protect them and secure their proper treatment. It is much to be feared that even this measure would be inadequate to save the forests of the American Union. There is little respect for public property in America, and the Federal Government, certainly, would not be the proper agent of the nation for this purpose. It proved itself unable to protect the live-oak woods of Florida, which were intended to be preserved for the use of the navy, and it more than once paid contractors a high price for timber stolen from its own forests. The authorities of the individual States might be more efficient.
[215] See the lively account of the sale of a communal wood in BERLEPSCH, _Die Alpen, Holzschlager und Flosser_.
[216] Streffleur (_Ueber die Natur und die Wirkungen der Wildbache_, p.
3) maintains that all the observations and speculations of French authors on the nature of torrents had been antic.i.p.ated by Austrian writers. In proof of this a.s.sertion he refers to the works of Franz von Zallinger, 1778, Von Arretin, 1808, Franz Duile, 1826, all published at Innsbruck, and HAGEN's _Beschreibung neuerer Wa.s.serbauwerke_, Konigsberg, 1826, none of which works are known to me. It is evident, however, that the conclusions of Surell and other French writers whom I cite, are original results of personal investigation, and not borrowed opinions.
[217] Whether Palissy was acquainted with this ancient practice, or whether it was one of those original suggestions of which his works are so full, I know not; but in his treatise, _Des Eaux et Fontaines_, he thus recommends it, by way of reply to the objections of ”Theorique,”
who had expressed the fear that ”the waters which rush violently down from the heights of the mountain would bring with them much earth, sand, and other things,” and thus spoil the artificial fountain that ”Practique” was teaching him to make: ”And for hindrance of the mischiefs of great waters which may be gathered in few hours by great storms, when thou shalt have made ready thy parterre to receive the water, thou must lay great stones athwart the deep channels which lead to thy parterre. And so the force of the rus.h.i.+ng currents shall be deadened, and thy water shall flow peacefully into his cisterns.”--_[OE]uvres Completes_, p. 173.
[218] Ladoucette says the peasant of Devoluy ”often goes a distance of five hours over rocks and precipices for a single [man's] load of wood;”
and he remarks on another page, that ”the justice of peace of that canton had, in the course of forty-three years, but once heard the voice of the nightingale.”--_Histoire, etc., des Hautes Alpes_, pp. 220, 434.
[219] The valley of Embrun, now almost completely devastated, was once remarkable for its fertility. In 1806, Hericart de Thury said of it: ”In this magnificent valley nature had been prodigal of her gifts. Its inhabitants have blindly revelled in her favors, and fallen asleep in the midst of her profusion.”--BECQUEREL, _Des Climats, etc._, p. 314.
[220] In the days of the Roman empire the Durance was a navigable river, with a commerce so important that the boatmen upon it formed a distinct corporation.--LADOUCETTE, _Histoire, etc., des Hautes Alpes_, p. 354.
Even as early as 1789, the Durance was computed to have already covered with gravel and pebbles not less than 130,000 acres, ”which, but for its inundations, would have been the finest land in the province.”--ARTHUR YOUNG, _Travels in France_, vol. i, ch. i.
[221] Between 1851 and 1856 the population of Languedoc and Provence had increased by 101,000 souls. The augmentation, however, was wholly in the provinces of the plains, where all the princ.i.p.al 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.
[222] 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 pa.s.sing 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 gradual diminution of the volume of the river.
Within the last twenty years, the superior quality of the arms manufactured at Brescia has greatly enlarged 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 rapidly stripped of their timber. Up to 1850, no destructive inundation of the Mella had been recorded. Buildings in great numbers had been erected upon its margin, and its valley was conspicuous for its rural beauty and its fertility.
But when the denudation of the mountains had reached a certain point, avenging nature began the work of retribution. In the spring and summer of 1850 several new torrents were suddenly formed in the upper tributary valleys, and on the 14th and 15th of August in that year, a fall of rain, not heavier than had been often experienced, produced a flood which not only inundated much ground never before overflowed, but destroyed a great number of bridges, dams, factories, and other valuable structures, and, what was a far more serious evil, swept off from the rocks an incredible extent of soil, and converted one of the most beautiful valleys of the Italian Alps into a ravine almost as bare and as barren as the savagest gorge of Southern France. The pecuniary damage was estimated at many millions of francs, and the violence of the catastrophe was deemed so extraordinary, even in a country subject to similar visitations, that the sympathy excited for the sufferers produced, in five months, voluntary contributions for their relief to the amount of nearly $200,000--_Delle Inondazioni del Mella, etc., nella notte del 14 al 15 Agosto_, 1850.
The author of this remarkable pamphlet has chosen as a motto a pa.s.sage from the Vulgate translation of Job, which is interesting as showing accurate observation of the action of the torrent: ”Mons cadens definit, et saxum transfertur de loco suo; lapides excavant aquae et alluvione paullatim terra consumitur.”--_Job_ xiv, 18, 19.
The English version is much less striking, and gives a different sense.
[223] Streffleur quotes from Duile the following observations: ”The channel of the Tyrolese brooks is often raised much above the valleys through which they flow. The bed of the Fersina is elevated high above the city of Trient, which lies near it. The Villerbach flows at a much more elevated level than that of the market place of Neumarkt and Vill, and threatens to overwhelm both of them with its waters. The Talfer at Botzen is at least even with the roofs of the adjacent town, if not above them. The tower steeples of the villages of Schlanders, Kortsch, and Laas, are lower than the surface of the Gadribach. The Saldurbach at Schluderns menaces the far lower village with destruction, and the chief town, Schwaz, is in similar danger from the Lahnbach.”--STREFFLEUR, _Ueber die Wildbache, etc._, p. 7.