But, though man may press the forces of nature into his service, there is a limit to the extent of his dominion over them, and unless future generations shall discover new modes of controlling those forces, or new remedies against their action, he must at last succumb in the struggle. When the marine estuaries and other basins of reception shall be filled up with the sedimentary debris of the mountains, or when the lower course of the rivers shall be raised or prolonged by their own deposits until they have, no longer, such a descent that gravitation and the momentum of the current can overcome the frictional resistance of the bed and banks, the water will, in spite of all obstacles, diffuse itself laterally and for a time raise the level of the champaign land upon its borders, and at last convert it into morasses. It is for this reason that Lombardini advises that a considerable space along the lower course of rivers be left undiked, and the water allowed to spread itself over its banks and gradually raise them by its deposits. [Footnote: This method has been adopted on the lower course of the Lamone, and a considerable extent of low ground adjacent to that river has been raised by spontaneous deposit to a sufficient height to admit of profitable cultivation.] This would, indeed, be a palliative, but only a palliative. For the present, however, we have nothing better, and here, as often in political economy, we must content ourselves with "apres nous le deluge," allowing posterity to suffer the penalty of our improvidence and our ignorance, or to devise means for itself to ward off the consequences of them.

The deposit of slime by rivers upon the flats along their banks not only contributes greatly to the fertility of the soil thus flowed, but it subserves a still more important purpose in the general economy of nature. All running streams begin with excavating channels for themselves, or deepening the natural depressions in which they flow; [Footnote: I do not mean to say that all rivers excavate their own valleys, for I have no doubt that in the majority of cases such depressions of the surface originate in higher geological causes, such as the fissures and other irregularities of surface which could not fail to accompany upheaval, and hence the valley makes the river, not the river the valley. But even if we suppose a basin of the hardest rock to be elevated at once, completely formed, from the submarine abyss where it was fashioned, the first shower of rain that falls upon it, after it rises to the air, will discharge its waters along the lowest lines of the surface, and cut those lines deeper, and so on with every successive rain. The disintegrated rock from the upper part of the basin forms the lower by alluvial deposit, which is constantly transported farther and farther until the resistance of gravitation and cohesion balances the mechanical force of the running water. Thus plains, more or less steeply inclined, are formed, in which the river is constantly changing its bed, according to the perpetually varying force and direction of its currents, modified as they are by ever-fluctuating conditions. Thus the Po is said to have long inclined to move its channel southwards, at certain points, in consequence of the mechanical force of its northern affluents. A diversion of these tributaries from their present beds, so that they should enter the main stream at other points and in different directions, might modify the whole course of that great river. But the mechanical force of the tributary is not the only element of its influence on the course of the principal stream. The deposits it lodges in the bed of the latter, acting as simple obstructions or causes of diversion, are not less important agents of change.] but in proportion as their outlets are raised by the solid material transported by their currents, their velocity is diminished, they deposit gravel and sand at constantly higher and higher points, and so at last elevate, in the middle and lower part of their course, the beds they had previously scooped out. [Footnote: The distance to which a new obstruction to the flow of a river, whether by a dam or by a deposit in its channel, will retard its current, or, in popular phrase, "set back the water," is a problem of more difficult practical solution than almost any other in hydraulics. The elements—such as straightness or crookedness of channel, character of bottom and banks, volume and previous velocity of current, mass of water far above the obstruction, extraordinary drought or humidity of seasons, relative extent to which the river may be affected by the precipitation in its own basin, and by supplies received through subterranean channels from sources so distant as to be exposed to very different meteorological influences, effects of clearing and other improvements always going on in new countries—are all extremely difficult, and some of them impossible, to be known and measured. In the American States, very numerous water-mills have been erected within a few years, and there is scarcely a stream in the settled portion of the country which has not several mill-dams upon it. When a dam is raised—a process which the gradual diminution of the summer currents renders frequently necessary—or when a new dam is built, it often happens that the meadows above are flowed, or that the retardation of the stream extends back to the dam next above. This leads to frequent law-suits. From the great uncertainty of the facts, the testimony is more conflicting in these than in any other class of cases, and the obstinacy with which "water causes" are disputed has become proverbial.] The raising of the channels is compensated in part by the simultaneous elevation of their banks and the flats adjoining them, from the deposit of the finer particles of earth and vegetable mould brought down from the mountains, without which elevation the low grounds bordering all rivers would be, as in many cases they in fact are, mere morasses.

All arrangements which tend to obstruct this process of raising the flats adjacent to the channel, whether consisting in dikes which confine the waters, and, at the same time, augment the velocity of the current, or in other means of producing the last-mentioned effect, interfere with the restorative economy of nature, and at last occasion the formation of marshes where, if left to herself, she might have accumulated inexhaustible stores of the richest soil, and spread them out in plains above the reach of ordinary floods. [Footnote: The sediment of the Po has filled up some lagoons and swamps in its delta, and converted them into comparatively dry land; but, on the other hand, the retardation of the current from the lengthening of its course, and the diminution of its velocity by the deposits at its mouth, have forced its waters at some higher points to spread in spite of embankments, and thus fertile fields have been turned into unhealthy and unproductive marshes.—See Botter, Sulla condizione dei Terreni Maremmani nel Ferraress. Annali di Agricoltura, etc., Fasc. v., 1863.]

Dikes, which, as we have seen, are the means most frequently employed to prevent damage by inundation, are generally parallel to each other and separated by a distance not very much greater than the natural width of the bed. [Footnote: In the case of rivers flowing through wide alluvial plains and much inclined to shift their beds, like the Po, the embankments often leave a very wide space between them. The dikes of the Po are sometimes three or four miles apart.] If such walls are high enough to confine the water and strong enough to resist its pressure, they secure the lands behind them from all the evils of inundation except those resulting from filtration; but such ramparts are enormously costly in original construction and in maintenance, and, as has been already shown, the filling up of the bed of the river in its lower course, by sand and gravel, often involves the necessity of incurring new expenditures in increasing the height of the banks. [Footnote: It appears from the investigations of Lombardini that the rate of elevation of the bed of the Po has been much exaggerated by earlier writers, and in some parts of its course the change is so slow that its level may be regarded as nearly constant. Observation has established a similar constancy in the bed of the Rhone and of many other important rivers, while, on the other hand, the beds of the Adige and the Brenta, streams of a more torrential character, are raised considerably above the level of the adjacent fields.

The length of the lower course of the Po having been considerably increased by the filling up of the Adriatic with its deposits, the velocity of the current ought, prima facie, to have been diminished and its bed raised in proportion. There are abundant grounds for believing that this has happened in the case of the Nile, and one reason why the same effect has not been more sensibly perceptible in the Po is, that the confinement of the current by continuous embankements gives it a high-water velocity sufficient to sweep out deposits let fall at lower stages and slower movements of the water. Torrential streams tend to excavate or to raise their beds according to the inclination, and to the character of the material they transport. No general law on this point can be laid down in relation to the middle and lower courses of rivers. The conditions which determine the question of the depression or elevation of a river-bed are too multifarious, variable, and complex, to be subjected to formulae, and they can scarcely even be enumerated.

The following observation, however, though apparently too unconditionally stated, is too important to be omitted.

Rivers which transport sand, gravel, pebbles, heavy mineral matter in short, tend to raise their own beds; those charged only with fine, light earth, to cut them deeper. The prairie rivers of the western United States have deep channels, because the mineral matter they carry down is not heavy enough to resist the impulse of even a moderate current, and those tributaries of the Po which deposit their sediment in the lakes—the Ticino, the Adda, the Oglio, and the Mincio—flow in deep cuts, for the same reason.—Baumgarten, p. 132.

In regard to the level of the bed of the Po, there is another weighty consideration which does not seem to have received the attention it deserves. refer to the secular depression of the western coast of the Adriatic, which is computed at the rate of fifteen or twenty centimetres in a century, and which of course increases the inclination of the bed, and the velocity and transporting power of the current of the Po, UNLESS we assume that the whole course of the river, from the sea to its sources, shares in the depression. Of this assumption there is no proof, and the probability is to the contrary. For the evidence, though not conclusive, perhaps, tends to show an elevation of the Tuscan coast, and even of the Ligurian shore at points lying farther west than the sources of the Po. The level of certain parts of the bed of the river referred to by Lombardini as constant, is not their elevation as compared with points nearer the sea, but relatively to the adjacent plains, and there is every reason to believe that the depression of the Adriatic coast, whether, as is conceivable, occasioned by the mere weight of the fluviatile deposits or by more general geological causes, has increased the slope of the bed of the river between the points in question and the sea. In this instance, then, the relative permanency of the river level at certain points may be, not the ordinary case of a natural equilibrium, but the negative effect of an increased velocity of current which prevents deposits where they would otherwise have happened.] They are attended, too, with some collateral disadvantages. They deprive the earth of the fertilizing deposits of the waters, which are powerful natural restoratives of soils exhausted by cultivation; they accelerate the rapidity and transporting power of the current at high water by confining it to a narrower channel, and it consequently conveys to the sea the earthy matter it holds in suspension, and chokes up harbors with a deposit which it would otherwise have spread over a wider surface; they interfere with roads and the convenience of river navigation, and no amount of cost or care can secure them from occasional rupture, in case of which the rush of the waters through the breach is more destructive than the natural flow of the highest inundation. [Footnote: To secure the city of Sacramento, in California, from the inundations to which it is subject, a dike or levee was built upon the bank of the river and raised to an elevation above that of the highest known floods, and it was connected, below the town, with grounds lying considerably above the river. On one occasion a breach in the dike occurred above the town at a very high stage of the flood. The water poured in behind it, and overflowed the lower part of the city, which remained submerged for some time after the river had retired to its ordinary level, because the dike, which had been built to keep the water OUT, now kept it IN.

According to Arthur Young, on the lower Po, where the surface of the river at high water has been elevated considerably above the level of the adjacent fields by diking, the peasants in his time frequently endeavored to secure their grounds against threatened devastation through the bursting of the dikes, by crossing the river when the danger became imminent and opening a cut in the opposite bank, thus saving their own property by flooding their neighbors'. He adds, that at high water the navigation of the river was absolutely interdicted, except to mail and passenger boats, and that the guards fired upon all others; the object of the prohibition being to prevent the peasants from resorting to this measure of self-defence.—Travels in Italy and Spain, Nov. 7, 1789.

In a flood of the Po in 1839, a breach of the embankment took place at Bonizzo. The water poured through and inundated 116,000 acres, or 181 square miles, of the plain to the depth of from twenty to twenty-three feet, in the lower parts. The inundation of May, 1872, a giant breach occurred in the dike near Ferrara, and 170,000 acres of cultivated land were overflowed, and a population of 30,000 souls driven from their homes. In the flood of October in the same year, in consequence of a breach of the dike at Revere, 250,000 acres of cultivated soil were overflowed, and 60,000 persons were made homeless. The dikes were seriously injured at more than forty points. See page 279, ante. In the flood of 1856, the Loire made seventy-three breaches in its dikes, and thus, instead of a comparatively gradual rise and gentle expansion of its waters, it created seventy-three impetuous torrents, which inflicted infinitely greater mischief than a simply natural overflow would have done. The dikes or levees of the Mississippi, being of more recent construction than those of the Po, are not yet well consolidated and fortified, and for this reason crevasses which occasion destructive inundations are of very frequent occurrence.]

For these reasons, many experienced engineers are of opinion that the system of longitudinal dikes is fundamentally wrong, and it has been argued that if the Po, the Adige, and the Brenta had been left unconfined, as the Nile formerly was, and allowed to spread their muddy waters at will, according to the laws of nature, the sediment they have carried to the coast would have been chiefly distributed over the plains of Lombardy. Their banks, it is supposed, would have risen as fast as their beds, the coast-line would not have been extended so far into the Adriatic, and, the current of the streams being consequently shorter, the inclination of their channel and the rapidity of their flow would not have been so greatly diminished. Had man, too, spared a reasonable proportion of the forests of the Alps, and not attempted to control the natural drainage of the surface, the Po, it has been said, would resemble the Nile in all its essential characteristics, and, in spite of the difference of climate, perhaps be regarded as the friend and ally, not the enemy and the invader, of the population which dwells upon its banks.

But it has been shown by Humphreys and Abbot that the system of longitudinal dikes is the only one susceptible of advantageous application to the Mississippi, and if we knew the primitive geography and hydrography of the basin of the Po as well as wo do those of the valley of the great American river, we should very probably find that the condemnation of the plan pursued by the ancient inhabitants of Lombardy is a too hasty generalization, and that the case of the Nile is an exception, not an example of the normal regime and condition of a great river. [Footnote: Embankments have been employed on the lower course of the Po for at least two thousand years, and for some centuries they have been connected in a continuous chain from the sea to the vicinity of Cremona. From early ages the Italian hydrographers have stood in the front rank of their profession, and the Italian literature of this branch of material improvement is exceedingly voluminous, exhaustive, and complete.

"The science of rivers after the barbarous ages," says Mengotti, "may be said to have been born and perfected in Italy." The eminent Italian engineer Lombardini published in 1870, under the title of Guida allo studio dell' idrologia fluviale e dell' Idraulica practica, which serves both as a summary of the recent progress of that science and as an index to the literature of the subject. The professional student, therefore, as well as the geographer, will have very frequent occasion to consult Italian authorities, and in the very valuable Report of Humphreys and Abbot on the Mississippi, America has lately made a contribution to our potamological knowledge, which, in scientific interest and practical utility, does not fall short of the ablest European productions in the same branch of inquiry.]

But in any event, these theoretical objections are counsels apres coup. The dikes of the Po and probably of some of its tributaries were begun before we have any trustworthy physical or political annals of the provinces they water. The civilization of the valley has accommodated itself to these arrangements, and the interests which might be sacrificed by a change of system are too vast to be hazarded by what, in the present state of our knowledge, can be only considered as a doubtful experiment. [Footnote: Dupenchel advised a resort to the "heroic remedy" of sacrificing, or converting into cellars, the lower storeys of houses in cities exposed to river inundation, filling up the streets, and admitting the water of floods freely over the adjacent country, and thus allowing it to raise the level of the soil to that of the highest inundations.—Traite d'Hydraulique et de Geologie Agricole, Paris, 1868, p. 241.]

The embankments of the Po, though they are of vast extent and have employed centuries in their construction, are inferior in magnitude to the dikes or levees of the Mississippi, which are the work of scarcely a hundred years, and of a comparatively sparse population. On the right or western bank of the river, the levee extends, with only occasional interruptions from high bluffs and the mouths of rivers, for a distance of more than eleven hundred miles. The left bank is, in general, higher than the right, and upon that side a continuous embankment is not needed; but the total length of the dikes of the Mississippi, including those of the lower course of its tributaries and of its bayous or natural emissaries, is not less than 2,500 miles. They constitute, therefore, not only one of the greatest material achievements of the American people, but one of the most remarkable systems of physical improvement which has been anywhere accomplished in modern times.

Those who condemn the system of longitudinal embankments have often advised that, in cases where that system cannot be abandoned without involving too great a sacrifice of existing interests, the elevation of the dikes should be much reduced, so as to present no obstruction to the lateral spread of extraordinary floods, and that they should be provided with sluices to admit the water without violence whenever they are likely to be overflowed. Where dikes have not been erected, or where they have been reduced in height, it is proposed to construct, at convenient intervals, transverse embankments of moderate height running from the banks of the river across the plains to the hills which bound them. These measures, it is argued, will diminish the violence of inundations by permitting the waters to extend themselves over a greater surface, and by thus retarding the flow of the river currents, will, at the same time, secure the deposit of fertilizing slime upon all the soil covered by the flood. [Footnote: The system described in the text is substantially the Egyptian method, the ancient Nile dikes having been constructed rather to retain than to exclude the water.]

Rozet, an eminent French engineer, has proposed a method of diminishing the ravages of inundations, which aims to combine the advantages of all other systems, and at the same time to obviate the objections to which they are all more or less liable. [Footnote: Moyens de forcer les Torrents de rendre une partie du sol qu'ils ravagent, et d'empecher les grandes Inondations.] The plan of Rozet is recommended by its simplicity and cheapness as well as its facility and rapidity of execution, and is looked upon with favor by many persons very competent to judge in such matters. It is, however, by no means capable of universal application, though it would often doubtless prove highly useful in connection with the measures now employed in South-eastern France. He proposes to commence with the amphitheatres in which mountain torrents so often rise, by covering their slopes and filling their beds with loose blocks of rock, and by constructing at their outlets, and at other narrow points in the channels of the torrents, permeable barriers of the same material promiscuously heaped up, much according to the method employed by the ancient Romans in their northern provinces for a similar purpose. By this means, he supposes, the rapidity of the current would be checked, and the quantity of transported pebbles and gravel—which, by increasing the mechanical force of the water, greatly aggravate the damage by floods—much diminished. When the stream has reached that part of its course where it is bordered by soil capable of cultivation, and worth the expense of protection, he proposes to place along one or both banks, according to circumstances, a line of cubical blocks of stone or pillars of masonry three or four feet high and wide, and at the distance of about eleven yards from each other. The space between the two lines, or between a line and the opposite high bank, would, of course, be determined by observation of the width of the swift-water current at high floods. As an auxiliary measure, small ditches and banks, or low walls of pebbles, should be constructed from the line of blocks across the grounds to be protected, nearly at right angles to the current, but slightly inclining downwards, and at convenient distances from each other. Rozet thinks the proper interval would be 300 yards, and it is evident that, if he is right in his main principle, hedges, rows of trees, or even common fences, would in many cases answer as good a purpose as banks and trenches or low walls. The blocks or pillars of stone would, he contends, check the lateral currents so as to compel them to let fall all their pebbles and gravel in the main channel—where they would be rolled along until ground down to sand or silt—and the transverse obstructions would detain the water upon the soil long enough to secure the deposit of its fertilizing slime. Numerous facts are cited in support of the author's views, and I imagine there are few residents of rural districts whose own observation will not furnish testimony confirmatory of their soundness. [Footnote: The effect of trees and other detached obstructions in checking the flow of water is particularly noticed by Palissy in his essay on Waters and Fountains, p. 173, edition of 1844. "There be," says he, "in divers parts of France, and specially at Nantes, wooden bridges, where, to break the force of the waters and of the floating ice, which might endamage the piers of the said bridges, they have driven upright timbers into the bed of the rivers above the said piers, without the which they should abide but little. And in like wise, the trees which be planted along the mountains do much deaden the violence of the waters that flow from them."

Lombardini attaches great importance to the planting of rows of trees transversely to the current on grounds subject to overflow.—Esame degli Studi sul Tevere, Section 53, and Appendice, Sections 33, 34.]

Removal of Obstructions.

The removal of obstructions in the beds of rivers dredging the bottom or blasting rocks, the washing out of deposits and locally increasing the depth of water by narrowing the channel by moans of spurs or other constructions projecting from the banks, and, finally, the cutting off of bends and thus shortening the course of the stream, diminishing the resistance of its shores and bottom and giving the bed a more rapid declivity, have all been employed not only to facilitate navigation, but as auxiliaries to more effectual modes of preventing inundations. But a bar removed from one point is almost sure to re-form at the same or another, spurs occasion injurious eddies and unforeseen diversions of the current, [Footnote: The introduction of a new system of spurs with parabolic curves has been attended with giant advantage in France.—Annales du Genie Civil, Mai, 1863.] and the cutting off of bends, though occasionally effected by nature herself, and sometimes advantageous in torrential streams whose banks are secured by solid walls of stone or other artificial constructions, seldom establishes a permanent channel, and besides, the increased rapidity of the flow through the new cut often injuriously affects the regime of the river for a considerable distance below. [Footnote: This practice has sometimes been resorted to on the Mississippi with advantage to navigation, but it is quite another question whether that advantage has not been too dearly purchased by the injury to the banks at lower points. If we suppose a river to have a navigable course of 1,600 miles as measured by its natural channel, with a descent of 800 feet, we shall have a fall of six inches to the mile. If the length of channel be reduced to 1,200 miles by cutting off bends, the fall is increased to eight inches per mile. The augmentation of velocity consequent upon this increase of inclination is not computable without taking into account other elements, such as depth and volume of water, diminution of direct resistance, and the like, but in almost any supposable case, it would be sufficient to produce great effects on the height of floods, the deposit of sediment in the channel, on the shores, and at the outlet, the erosion of banks and other points of much geographical importance.

The Po, in those parts of its course where the embankments leave a wide space between, often cuts off bends in its channel and straightens its course. These short cuts are called salti, or leaps, and sometimes abridge the distance between their termini by several miles. In 1777, the salto of Cottaro shortened a distance of 7,000 metres by 5,000, or, in other words, reduced the length of the river by five kilometres, or about three miles, and in 1807 and 1810 the two salti of Mozzanone effected a still greater reduction.]

Combination of Methods.

Upon the whole, it is obvious that no one of the methods heretofore practised or proposed for averting the evils resulting from river inundations is capable of universal application. Each of them is specially suited to a special case. But the hydrography of almost every considerable river and its tributaries will be found to embrace most special cases, most known forms of superficial fluid circulation. For rivers, in general, begin in the mountains, traverse the plains, and end in the sea; they are torrents at their sources, swelling streams in their middle course, placid currents, flowing molli flumine, at their termination. Hence in the different parts of their course the different methods of controlling and utilizing them may successively find application, and there is every reason to believe that by a judicious application of all, every great river may, in a considerable degree, be deprived of its powers of evil and rendered subservient to the use, the convenience, and the dominion of man. [Footnote: On the remedies against inundation, see the valuable paper of Lombardini, Sulle Inondazioni avvenute in questi ultimi tempi in Francia. Milano, 1858.

There can be no doubt that in the case of rivers which receive their supply in a large measure from mountain streams, the methods described in a former chapter as recently employed in South-eastern France to arrest the formation and lessen the force of torrents, would prove equally useful as a preventive remedy against inundations. They would both retard the delivery of surface-water and diminish the discharge of sediment into rivers, thus operating at once against the two most efficient causes of destructive floods. See Chapter III., pp. 316 at seqq.]

Dikes of the Nile.

"History tells us," says Mengotti, "that the Nile became terrible and destructive to ancient Egypt, in consequence of being confined within elevated dikes, from the borders of Nubia to the sea. It being impossible for these barriers to resist the pressure of its waters at such a height, its floods burst its ramparts, sometimes on one side, sometimes on the other, and deluged the plains, which lay far below the level of its current. . . . In one of its formidable inundations the Nile overwhelmed and drowned a large part of the population. The Egyptians then perceived that they were struggling against nature in vain, and they resolved to remove the dikes, and permit the river to expand itself laterally and raise by its deposits the surface of the fields which border its channel." [Footnote: Idraulica Fisica e Sperimentale. 2d edizione, vol. i., pp. 131, 133.]

The original texts of the passages cited by Mengotti, from Latin translations of Diodorus Siculus and Plutarch and from Pliny the Elder, do not by any means confirm this statement, though the most important of them, that from Diodorus Siculus, is, perhaps, not irreconcilable with it. Not one of them speaks of the removal of the dikes, and I understand them all as relating to the mixed system of embankments, reservoirs, and canals which have been employed in Egypt through the whole period concerning which we have clear information. I suppose that the disastrous inundations referred to by the authors in question were simply extraordinary floods of the same character as those which have been frequent at later periods of Egyptian history, and I find nothing in support of the proposition that continuous embankments along the banks of the Nile ever existed until such were constructed by Mehemet Ali. [Footnote: The gradual elevation of the bed of the Nile from sedimentary deposit, from the prolongation of the Delta and consequent reduction of the inclination of the river-bed, or, as has been supposed by some, though without probability, from a secular rise of the coast, rendered necessary some change in the hydraulic arrangements of Egypt. Mehemet Ali was advised to adopt a system of longitudinal levees, and he embanked the river from Jebel Silsileh to the sea with dikes six or seven feet high and twenty feet thick. Similar embankments were made around the Delta. These dikes are provided with transverse embankments, with sluices for admitting and canals for distributing the water, and they serve rather to retain the water and control its flow than to exclude it. Clot Bey, Apercu sur l'Egypte, ii., 437.]

The object of the dikes of the Po, and, with few exceptions, of those of other European rivers, has always been to confine the waters of floods and the solid material transported by them within as narrow a channel as possible, and entirely to prevent them from flowing over the adjacent plains. The object of the Egyptian dikes and canals is the reverse, namely, to diffuse the swelling waters and their sediment over as wide a surface as possible, to store them up until the soil they cover has them thoroughly saturated and enriched, and then to conduct them over other grounds requiring a longer or a second submersion, and, in general, to suffer none of the precious fluid to escape except by evaporation and infiltration.

Lake Moeris, whether wholly an artificial excavation, or a natural basin converted by embankments into a reservoir, was designed chiefly for the same purpose as the barrage built by Mougel Bey across the two great arms which enclose the Delta, namely, as a magazine to furnish a perennial supply of water to the thirsty soil. But these artificial arrangements alone did not suffice. Canals were dug to receive the water at lower stages of the river and conduct it far into the interior, and as all this was still not enough, hundreds of thousands of wells were sunk to bring up from the subsoil, and spread over the surface, the water which, by means of infiltration from the river-bed, pervades the inferior strata of the whole valley. [Footnote: It is said that in the Delta alone 50,000 wells are employed for irrigation.]

If a system of lofty continuous dikes, like those of the Po, had really been adopted in Egypt, in the early dynasties when the power and the will to undertake the most stupendous material enterprises were so eminently characteristic of the government of that country, and persevered in through later ages, and the waters of the annual inundation had thus been permanently prevented from flooding the land, it is conceivable that the productiveness of the small area of cultivable soil in the Nile valley might have been long kept up by artificial irrigation and the application of manures. But nature would have rebelled at last, and centuries before our time the mighty river would have burst the fetters by which impotent man had vainly striven to bind his swelling floods, the fertile fields of Egypt would have been converted into dank morasses, and then, perhaps, in some distant future, when the expulsion of man should have allowed the gradual restoration of the primitive equilibrium, would be again transformed into luxuriant garden and plough land. Fortunately, the sapientia AEgyptiorum, the wisdom of the Egyptians, taught them better things. They invited and welcomed, not repulsed, the slimy embraces of Nilus, and his favors have been, from the hoariest antiquity, the greatest material blessing that nature ever bestowed upon a people. [Footnote: Deep borings have not detected any essential difference in the quantity or quality of the deposits of the Nile for forty or fifty, or, as some compute, for a hundred centuries. From what vast store of rich earth does this river derive the three or four inches of fertilizing material which it spreads over the soil of Egypt every hundred years Not from the White Nile, for that river drops nearly all its suspended matter in the broad expansions and slow current of its channel south of the tenth degree of north latitude. Nor does it appear that much sediment is contributed by the Bahr-el-Azrek, which flows through forests for a great part of its course. I have been informed by an old European resident of Egypt who is very familiar with the Upper Nile, that almost the whole of the earth with which its waters are charged is brought down by the Takazze.]

Deposits of the Nile.

The Nile is larger than all the rivers of Lombardy together, [Footnote: From daily measurements during a period of fourteen years—1827 to 1840—the mean delivery of the Po at Ponte Lagoscuro, below the entrance of its last tributary, is found to be 1,720 cubic metres, or 60,745 cubic feet, per second. Its smallest delivery is 186 cubic metres, or 6,569 cubic feet, its greatest 5,156 cubic metres, or 152,094 cubic feet. The average delivery of the Nile being 101,000 cubic feet per second, it follows that the Po contributes to the Adriatic rather more than six-tenths as much water as the Nile to the Mediterranean—a result which will surprise most readers.

It is worth remembering that the mean delivery of the Rhone is almost identical with that of the Po, and that of the Rhine is very nearly the same. Though the Po receives four-tenths of its water from lakes, in which the streams that empty into them let fall the solid material they bring down from the mountains, its deposits in the Adriatic are at least sixty or seventy per cent. greater than those transported to the Mediterranean by the Rhone, which derives most of its supply from mountain and torrential tributaries. Those tributaries lodge much sediment in the Lake of Geneva and the Lac de Bourget, but the total erosion of the Po and its affluents must be considerably greater than that of the Rhone system. The Rhine conveys to the sea much less sediment than either of the other two rivers.—Lombardini, Cargiamenti nella condizione del Po, pp. 29, 39.

The mean discharge of the Mississippi is 675,000 cubic feet per second, and, accordingly, that river contributes to the sea about eleven times as much water as the Po, and more than six and a half times as much as the Nile. The discharge of the Mississippi is estimated at one-fourth of the precipitation in its basin—certainly a very large proportion, when we consider the rapidity of evaporation in many parts of the basin, and the probable loss by infiltration.—Humphreys and Abbott'S Report, p. 93.

The basin of the Mississippi has an area forty-six times as large as that of the Po, with a mean annual precipitation of thirty inches, while that of the Po, at least according to official statistics, has a precipitation of forty inches. Hence the down-fall in the former is one-fourth less than in the latter. Besides this, the Mississippi loses little or nothing by the diversion of its waters for irrigation. Consequently the measured discharge of the Mississippi is proportionally much less than that of the Po, and we are authorized to conclude that the difference is partly due to the escape of water from the bed, or at least the basin of the Mississippi, by subterranean channels.

These comparisons are interesting in reference to the supply received by the sea directly from great rivers, but they fail to give a true idea of the real volume of the latter. To take the case of the Nile and the Po: we have reason to suppose that comparatively little water is diverted from the tributaries of the former for irrigation, but enormous quantities are drawn from its main trunk for that purpose, below the point where it receives its last affluent. This quantity is now increasing in so rapid a proportion, that Elisee Reclus foresees the day when the entire low-water current will be absorbed by new arrangements to meet the needs of extended and improved agriculture. On the other hand, while the affluents of the Po send off a great quantity of water into canals of irrigation, the main trunk loses little or nothing in that way except at Chivasso. Trustworthy data are wanting to enable us to estimate how far these different modes of utilizing the water balance each other in the case under consideration. Perhaps the Canal Cavour, and other irrigating canals now proposed, may one day intercept as large a proportion of the supply of the lower Po as Egyptian dikes, canals, shadoofs, and steam-pumps do of that of the Nile.

Another circumstance is important to be considered in comparing the character of these three rivers. The Po runs nearly east and west, and it and its tributaries are exposed to no other difference of meterological conditions than those which always subsist between the mountains and the plains. The course of the Nile and the Mississippi is mainly north and south. The sources of the Nile are in a very humid region, its lower course for many hundred miles in almost rainless latitudes with enormous evaporating power, while the precipitation is large throughout the Mississippi system, except in the basins of some of its western affluents.] it drains a basin fifty, possibly even a hundred, times as extensive, its banks have been occupied by man probably twice as long. But its geographical character has not been much changed in the whole period of recorded history, and, though its outlets have somewhat fluctuated in number and position, its historically known encroachments upon the sea are trifling compared with those of the Po and the neighboring streams. The deposits of the Nile are naturally greater in Upper than in Lower Egypt. They are found to have raised the soil at Thebes about seven feet within the last seventeen hundred years, and in the Delta the rise has been certainly more than half as great.

We shall, therefore, probably not exceed the truth if we suppose the annually inundated surface of Egypt to have been elevated, upon an average, ten feet, [Footnote: Fraas and Eyth maintain that we have no trustworthy data for calculating the annual or secular elevation of the soil of Egypt by the sediment of the Nile. The deposit, they say, is variable from irregularity of current, and especially from the interference of man with the operations of nature, to a degree which renders any probable computation of the amount quite impossible.—Fraas, Aus dem Orient, pp. 212, 213.

The sedimentary matter transported by the Nile might doubtless be estimated with approximate precision by careful observation of the proportion of suspended slime and water at different stations and seasons for a few successive years. Figari Bey states that at low stages the water of the Nile contains little or no sediment, and that the greatest proportion occurs about the end of July, and of course, while the river is still rising. Experiments at Khartum at that season showed solid matter in the proportion of one to a thousand by weight. The quantity is relatively greater at Cairo, a fact which shows that the river receives more earth from the erosion of its banks than it deposits at its own bottom, and it must consequently widen its channel unless we suppose a secular depression of the coast at the mouth of the Nile which produces an increased inclination of the bed of the river, and consequently an augmented velocity of flow sufficient to sweep out earth from the bottom and mix it with the current.

Herschell states the Nile sediment at 1 in 633 by weight, and computes the entire annual quantity at 140 millions of tons.—Physical Geography, p. 231.

The mean proportion of sedimentary material in the waters of the Mississippi is calculated at 1 to 1,500 by weight, and 1 to 2,900 in volume, and the total annual quantity at 812,500,000,000 pounds, which would cover one square mile to the depth of 214 feet.—Humphreys and Abbott, Report, p. 140.] within the last 5,000 years, or twice and a half the period during which the history of the Po is known to us. [Footnote: We are quite safe in supposing that the valley of the Nile has been occupied by man at least 5,000 years. The dates of Egyptian chronology are uncertain, but I believe no inquirer estimates the age of the great pyramids at less than forty centuries, and the construction of such works implies an already ancient civilization.

It is an interesting fact that the old Egyptian system of embankments and canals is probably more ancient than the geological changes which have converted the Mississippi from a limpid to a turbid stream, and occasioned the formation of the vast delta at the mouth of that river. Humphreys and Abbot conclude that the delta of the Mississippi began its encroachments on the Gulf of Mexico not more than 4,400 years ago, before which period they suppose the Mississippi to have been "a comparatively clear stream," conveying very little sediment to the sea. The present rate of advance of the delta is 262 feet a year, and there are reasons for thinking that the amount of deposit has long been approximately constant.—Report, pp. 435, 436.]

As I have observed, the area of cultivated soil is much less extensive now than under the dynasties of the Pharaohs and the Ptolemies; for—though, in consequence of the elevation of the river-bed, the inundations now have a wider NATURAL spread—the industry of the ancient Egyptians conducted the Nile water over a great surface which it does not now reach.

Had the Nile been banked in, like the Po, all this deposit, except that contained in the water diverted by canals or otherwise drawn from the river for irrigation and other purposes, would have soon carried out to sea. This would have been a considerable quantity; for the Nile holds some earth in suspension at all seasons except at the very lowest water, a much larger proportion during the flood, and irrigation must have been carried on during the whole year. The precise amount of sediment which would have been thus distributed over the soil is matter of conjecture, but though large, it would have been much less than the inundations have deposited, and continuous longitudinal embankments would have compelled the Nile to transport to the Mediterranean an immense quantity over and above what it has actually deposited in that sea. The Mediterranean is shoal for some miles out to sea along the whole coast of the Delta, and the large bays or lagoons within the coast-line, which communicate both with the river and the sea, have little depth of water. These lagoons the river deposits would have filled up, and there would still have been surplus earth enough to extend the Delta far into the Mediterranean.

[Footnote: The present annual extension of the Delta is, if perceptible, at all events very small. According to some authorities, a few hectares are added every year at each Nile mouth. Others, among whom I may mention Fraas, deny that there is any extension at all, the deposit being balanced by a secular depression of the coast.

Elisee Reclus states that the Delta advances about 40 inches per year.—La Terre, i., p. 500.]

Obstruction of River Mouths.

The mouths of a large proportion of the streams known to ancient navigation are already blocked up by sand-bars or fluviatile deposits, and the maritime approaches to river harbors frequented by the ships of Phenicia and Carthage and Greece and Rome are shoaled to a considerable distance out to sea. The inclination of the lower course of almost every known river bed has been considerably reduced within the historical period, and nothing but great volume of water, or exceptional rapidity of flow, now enables a few large streams like the Amazon, the La Plata, the Ganges, and, in a loss degree, the Mississippi, to carry their own deposits far enough out into deep water to prevent the formation of serious obstructions to navigation. But the degradation of their banks, and the transportation of earthy matter to the sea by their currents, are gradually filling up the estuaries even of those mighty floods, and unless the threatened evil shall be averted by the action of geological forces, or by artificial contrivances more efficient than dredging-machines, the destruction of every harbor in the world which receives a considerable river must inevitably take place at no very distant date.

This result would, perhaps, have followed in some incalculably distant future, if man had not come to inhabit the earth as soon as the natural forces which had formed its surface had arrived at such an approximate equilibrium that his existence on the globe was possible; but the general effect of his industrial operations has been to accelerate it immensely. Rivers, in countries planted by nature with forests and never inhabited by man, employ the little earth and gravel they transport chiefly to raise their own beds and to form plains in their basins. In their upper course, where the current is swiftest, they are most heavily charged with coarse rolled or suspended matter, and this, in floods, they deposit on their shores in the mountain valleys where they rise; in their middle course, a lighter earth is spread over the bottom of their widening basins, and forms plains of moderate extent; the fine silt which floats farther is deposited over a still broader area, or, if carried out to sea, is in great part quickly swept far off by marine currents and dropped at last in deep water. Man's "improvement" of the soil increased the erosion from its surface; his arrangements for confining the lateral spread of the water in floods compel the rivers to transport to their mouths the earth derived from that erosion even in their upper course; and, consequently, the sediment they deposit at their outlets is not only much larger in quantity, but composed of heavier materials, which sink more readily to the bottom of the sea and are less easily removed by marine currents.

The tidal movement of the ocean, deep-sea currents, and the agitation of inland waters by the wind, lift up the sands strewn over the bottom by diluvial streams or sent down by mountain torrents, and throw them up on dry land, or deposit them in sheltered bays and nooks of the coast—for the flowing is stronger than the ebbing tide, the affluent than the refluent wave. This cause of injury to harbors it is not in man's power to resist by any means at present available; but, as we have seen, something can be done to prevent the degradation of high grounds, and to diminish the quantity of earth which is annually abstracted from the mountains, from table-lands, and from river-banks, to raise the bottom of the sea.

This latter cause of harbor obstruction, though an active agent, is, nevertheless, in many cases, the less powerful of the two. The earth suspended in the lower course of fluviatile currents is lighter than sea-sand, river water lighter than sea water, and hence, if a land stream enters the sea with a considerable volume, its water flows over that of the sea, and bears its slime with it until it lets it fall far from shore, or, as is more frequently the case, mingles with some marine current and transports its sediment to a remote point of deposit. The earth borne out of the mouths of the Nile is in part carried over the waves which throw up sea-sand on the beach, and deposited in deep water, in part drifted by the current, which sweeps east and north along the coasts of Egypt and Syria, and lodged in every nook along the shore—and among others, to the great detriment of the Suez Canal, in the artificial harbor at its northern terminus—and in part borne along until it finds a final resting-place in the north-eastern angle of the Mediterranean. [Footnote: "The stream carries this mud, etc., at first farther to the east, and only lets it fall where the force of the current becomes weakened. This explains the continual advance of the land seaward along the Syrian coast, in consequence of which Tyre and Sideon no longer lie on the shore, but some distance inland. That the Nile contributes to this deposit may easily be seen, even by the unscientific observer, from the stained and turbid character of the water for many miles from its mouths. Ships often encounter floating masses of Nile mud, and Dr. Clarke thus describes a case of this sort:

"While we were at table, we heard the sailors who were throwing the lead suddenly cry out: 'Three and a half!' The ship slackened her way, and veered about. As she came round, the whole surface of the water was seen to be covered with thick, black mud, which extended so far that it appeared like an island. At the same time, actual land was nowhere to be seen—not even from the mast-head—nor was any notice of such a shoal to be found or any chart on board. The fact is, as we learned afterwards, that a stratum of mud, stretching from the mouths of the Nile for many miles out into the open sea, forms a movable deposit along the Egyptian coast. If this deposit is driven forwards by powerful currents, it sometimes rises to the surface, and disturbs the mariner by the sudden appearance of shoals where the charts lead him to expect a considerable depth of water. But these strata of mud are, in reality, not in the least dangerous. As soon as a ship strikes them they break up at once, and a frigate may hold her course in perfect safety where an inexperienced pilot, misled by his soundings, would every moment expect to be stranded."—Bottger, Das Mittchneer, pp. 188, 189.

This phenomenon is not peculiar to the locality in question, and it is frequently observed in the Gulf of Bengal, and other great marine estuaries.]

Thus the earth loosened by the rude Abyssinian ploughshare, and washed down by the rain from the hills of Ethiopia which man has stripped of their protecting forests, contributes to raise the plains of Egypt, to shoal the maritime channels which lead to the city built by Alexander near the mouth of the Nile, to obstruct the artificial communication between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, and to fill up the harbors made famous by Phenician commerce.



Deposits of the Tuscan Rivers.

The Arno, and all the rivers rising on the western slopes and spurs of the Apennines, carry down immense quantities of mud to the Mediterranean. There can be no doubt that the volume of earth so transported is very much greater than it would have been had the soil about the headwaters of those rivers continued to be protected from wash by forests; and there is as little question that the quantity borne out to sea by the rivers of Western Italy is much increased by artificial embankments, because they are thereby prevented from spreading over the surface the sedimentary matter with which they are charged. The western coast of Tuscany has advanced some miles seawards within a very few centuries. The bed of the sea, for a long distance, has been raised, and of course the relative elevation of the land above it lessened; harbors have been filled up and destroyed; long lines of coast dunes have been formed, and the diminished inclination of the beds of the rivers near their outlets has caused their waters to overflow their banks and convert them into pestilential marshes. The territorial extent of Western Italy has thus been considerably increased, but the amount of soil habitable and cultivable by man has been, in a still higher proportion, diminished. The coast of ancient Etruria was filled with great commercial towns, and their rural environs were occupied by a large and prosperous population. But maritime Tuscany has long been one of the most unhealthy districts in Christendom; the famous Etruscan mart of Populonia has scarcely an inhabitant; the coast is almost absolutely depopulated, and the malarious fevers have extended their ravages far into the interior.

These results are certainly not to be ascribed wholly to human action. They are, in a large proportion, due to geological causes over which man has no control. The soil of much of Tuscany becomes pasty, almost fluid even, as soon as it is moistened, and when thoroughly saturated with water, it flows like a river. Such a soil as this would not be completely protected by woods, and, indeed, it would now be difficult to confine it long enough to allow it to cover itself with forest vegetation. Nevertheless, it certainly was once chiefly wooded, and the rivers which flow through it must then have been much less charged with earthy matter than at present, and they must have carried into the sea a smaller proportion of their sediment when they were free to deposit it on their banks than since they have been confined by dikes.

It is, in general, true, that the intervention of man has hitherto seemed to insure the final exhaustion, ruin, and desolation of every province of nature which he has reduced to his dominion. Attila was only giving an energetic and picturesque expression to the tendencies of human action, as personified in himself, when he said that "no grass grew where his horse's hoofs had trod." The instances are few, where a second civilization has flourished upon the ruins of an ancient culture, and lands once rendered uninhabitable by human acts or neglect have generally been forever abandoned as hopelessly irreclaimable. It is, as I have before remarked, a question of vast importance, how far it is practicable to restore the garden we have wasted, and it is a problem on which experience throws little light, because few deliberate attempts have yet been made at the work of physical regeneration, on a scale large enough to warrant general conclusions in any one class of cases.

The valleys and shores of Tuscany form, however, a striking exception to this remark. The succcess with which human guidance has made the operations of nature herself available for the restoration of her disturbed harmonies, in the Val di Chiana and the Tuscan Maremma, is among the noblest, if not the most brilliant achievements of modern engineering, and, regarded in all its bearings on the great question of which I have just spoken, it is, as an example, of more importance to the general interests of humanity than the proudest work of internal improvement that mechanical means have yet constructed. The operations in the Val di Chiana have consisted chiefly in so regulating the flow of the surface-waters into and through it, as to compel them to deposit their sedimentary matter at the will of the engineers, and thereby to raise grounds rendered insalubrious and unfit for agricultural use by stagnating water; the improvements in the Maremma have embraced both this method of elevating the level of the soil, and the prevention of the mixture of salt-water with fresh in the coast marshes and shallow bays, which is regarded as a very active cause of the development of malarious influences. [Footnote: The fact that the mixing of salt and fresh water in coast marshes and lagoons is deleterious to the sanitary condition of the vicinity, has been generally admitted, though the precise reason why a mixture of both should be more injurious than either alone, is not altogether clear. It has been suggested that the admission of salt-water to the lagoons and rivers kills many fresh-water plants and animals, while the fresh water is equally fatal to many marine organisms, and that the decomposition of the remains originates poisonous minsmata. Other theories, however, have been proposed. The whole subject is fully and ably discussed by Dr. Salvagnoli Marchetti in the appendix to his valuable Rapporto aul Bonificamento delle Maremme Toscane. See also the Memorie Economico-Statistiche sulle Maremme Toscane, of the same author. A different view of this subject is taken by Raffanini and Orlandini in Analisi, Storico-Fisico-Economica sulli insolubrita nelle Maremme Toscane, Firenze, 1869. See also the important memoir of D. Pantaleoni, Del miasma vegetale e delle Malattie Miasmatiche, in which the views of Salvagnoli on this point are combated.]

Improvements in the Tuscan Maremma.

In the improvements of the Tuscan Maremma, formidable difficulties have been encountered. The territory to be reclaimed was extensive; the salubrious places of retreat for laborers and inspectors were remote; the courses of the rivers to be controlled were long and their natural inclination not rapid; some of them, rising in wooded regions, transported comparatively little earthy matter, [Footnote: This difficulty has been remedied—though with doubtful general advantage—as to one important river of the Maremma, the Pecora, by clearings recently executed along its upper course. "The condition of this marsh and of its affluents are now, November, 1859, much changed, and it is advisable to prosecute its improvement by deposits. In consequence of the extensive felling of the woods upon the plains, hills, and mountains of the territory of Massa and Scarlino, within the last ten years, the Pecora and other affluents of the marsh receive, during the rains, water abundantly charged with slime, so that the deposits within the first division of the marsh are already considerable, and we may now hope to see the whole marsh and pond filled up in a much shorter time than we had a right to expect before 1850. This circumstance totally changes the terms of the question, because the filling of the marsh and pond, which then seemed almost impossible on account of the small amount of sediment deposited by the Pecora, has now become practicable."—Salvagnoli, Rapporto sul Bonificamento delle Maremme Toscane, pp.li., lii.

Between 1830 and 1859 more than 36,000,000 cubic yards of sediment were deposited in the marsh and shoal-water lake of Castiglione alone.—Salvagnoli, Raccolta di Documenti, pp. 74, 75.] and above all, the coast, which is a recent deposit of the waters, is little elevated above the sea, and admits into its lagoons and the mouths of its rivers floods of salt-water with every western wind, every rising tide. [Footnote: The tide rises ten inches on the coast of Tuscany. See Memoir by Fantoni, in the appendix to Salvagnoli, Rapporto, p. 189.

On the tides of the Mediterranean, see Bottger, Das Mittelmeer, p. 190.]

The western coast of Tuscany is not supposed to have been an unhealthy region before the conquest of Etruria by the Romans, but it certainly became so within a few centuries after that event. This was a natural consequence of the neglect or wanton destruction of the public improvements, and especially the hydraulic works in which the Etruscans were so skilful, and of the felling of the upland forests, to satisfy the demand for wood at Rome for domestic, industrial, and military purposes. After the downfall of the Roman empire, the incursions of the barbarians, and then feudalism, foreign domination, intestine wars, and temporal and spiritual tyrannies, aggravated still more cruelly the moral and physical evils which Tuscany and the other Italian States were doomed to suffer, and from which they have enjoyed but brief respites during the whole period of modern history. The Maremma was already proverbially unhealthy in the time of Dante, who refers to the fact in several familiar passages, and the petty tyrants upon its borders often sent criminals to places of confinement in its territory, as a slow but certain mode of execution. Ignorance of the causes of the insalubrity, and often the interference of private rights, [Footnote: In Catholic countries, the discipline of the church requires a meagre diet at certain seasons, and as fish is not flesh, there is a great demand for that article of food at those periods. For the convenience of monasteries and their patrons, and as a source of pecuniary emolument to ecclesiastical establishments and sometimes to lay proprietors, great numbers of artificial fish-ponds were created during the Middle Ages. They were generally shallow pools formed by damming up the outlet of marshes, and they were among the most fruitful sources of endemic disease, and of the peculiar malignity of the epidemics which so often ravaged Europe in those centuries. These ponds, in religious hands, were too sacred to be infringed upon for sanitary purposes, and when belonging to powerful lay lords they were almost an inviolable. The rights of fishery were a standing obstacle to every proposal of hydralic improvement, and to this day large and fertile districts in Southern Europe remain sickly and almost unimproved and uninhabited, because the draining of the ponds upon them would reduce the income of proprietors who derive large profits by supplying the faithful, in Lent, with fish, and with various species of waterfowl which, though very fat, are, ecclesiastically speaking, meagre.]prevented the adoption of measures to remove it, and the growing political and commercial importance of the large towns in more healthful localities absorbed the attention of Government, and deprived the Maremma of its just share in the systems of physical improvement which were successfully adopted in interior and Northern Italy.

Before any serious attempts were made to drain or fill up the marshes of the Maremma, various other sanitary experiments were tried. It was generally believed that the insalubrity of the province was the consequence, not the cause, of its depopulation, and that, if it were once densely inhabited, the ordinary operations of agriculture, and especially the maintenance of numerous domestic fires, would restore it to its ancient healthfulness. [Footnote: Macchiavelli advised the Government of Tuscany "to provide that men should restore the wholesomeness of the soil by cultivation, and purify the air by fires."—Salvagnoli, Memorie, p. 111.] In accordance with these views, settlers were invited from various parts of Italy, from Greece, and, after the accession of the Lorraine princes, from that country also, and colonized in the Maremma. To strangers coming from soils and skies so unlike those of the Tuscan marshes, the climate was more fatal than to the inhabitants of the neighboring districts, whose constitutions had become in some degree inured to the local influences, or who at least knew better how to guard against them. The consequence very naturally was that the experiment totally failed to produce the desired effects, and was attended with a great sacrifice of life and a heavy loss to the treasury of the state.

The territory known as the Tuscan Maremma, ora maritime, or Maremme—for the plural form is most generally used—lies upon and near the western coast of Tuscany, and comprises about 1,900 square miles English, of which 500 square miles, or 320,000 acres, are plain and marsh including 45,500 acres of water surface, and about 290,000 acres are forest. One of the mountain peaks, that of Mount Amiata, rises to the height of 6,280 feet. The mountains of the Maremma are healthy, the lower hills much less so, as the malaria is felt at some points at the height of 1,000 feet, and the plains, with the exception of a few localities favorably situated on the seacoast, are in a high degree pestilential. The fixed population is about 80,000, of whom one-sixth live on the plains in the winter and about one-tenth in the summer. Nine or ten thousand laborers come down from the mountains of the Maremma and the neighboring provinces into the plain, during the latter season, to cultivate and gather the crops.

Out of this small number of inhabitants and strangers, 35,619 were ill enough to require medical treatment between the 1st of June, 1840, and the 1st of June, 1841, and more than one-half the cases were of intermittent, malignant, gastric, or catarrhal fever. Very few agricultural laborers escaped fever, though the disease did not always manifest itself until they had returned to the mountains. In the province of Grosseto, which embraces nearly the whole of the Maremma, the annual mortality was 3.92 per cent., the average duration of life but 23.18 years, and 75 per cent. of the deaths were among persons engaged in agriculture.

The filling up of the low grounds and the partial separation of the waters of the sea and the land, which had been in progress since the year 1827, now began to show very decided effects upon the sanitary condition of the population. In the year ending June 1st, 1842, the number of the sick was reduced by more than 2,000, and the cases of fever by more than 4,000. The next year the cases of fever fell to 10,500, and in that ending June 1st, 1844, to 9,200. The political events of 1848, and the preceding and following years, occasioned the suspension of the works of improvement in the Maremma, but they were resumed after the revolution of 1859. I have spoken with some detail of the improvements in the Tuscan Maremma, because of their great relative importance, and because their history is well known; but like operations have been executed in the territory of Pisa and upon the coast of the duchy of Lucca. In the latter case they were confined principally to prevention of the intermixing of fresh water with that of the sea. In 1741 sluices or lock-gates were constructed for this purpose, and the following year the fevers, which had been destructive to the coast population for a long time previous, disappeared altogether. In 1768 and 1769, the works having fallen to decay, the fevers returned in a very malignant form, but the rebuilding of the gates again restored the healthfulness of the shore. Similar facts recurred in 1784 and 1785, and again from 1804 to 1821. This long and repeated experience has at last impressed upon the people the necessity of vigilant attention to the sluices, which are now kept in constant repair. The health of the coast is uninterrupted, and Viareggio, the capital town of the district, is now much frequented for its sea-baths and its general salubrity, at a season when formerly it was justly shunned as the abode of disease and death. [Footnote: Giorgini, Sur les causes de l'Insalubrite de l'air dans le voisinage des marais, etc., lue a l'Academie des Sciences a Paris, le 12 Juillet, 1825. Reprinted in Salvagnoli, Rapporto, etc., appendice, p. 5, et seqq.]

Improvements in the Val di Chiana.

For twenty miles or more after the remotest headwaters of the Arno have united to form a considerable stream, this river flows south-eastwards to the vicinity of Arezzo. It here sweeps round to the north-west, and follows that course to near its junction with the Sieve, a few miles above Florence, from which point its general direction is westward to the sea. From the bend at Arezzo, a depression called the Val di Chiana runs south-eastwards until it strikes into the valley of the Paglia, a tributary of the Tiber, and thus connects the basin of the latter river with that of the Arno. In the Middle Ages, and down to the eighteenth century, the Val di Chiana was often overflowed and devastated by the torrents which poured down from the highlands, transporting great quantities of slime with their currents, stagnating upon its surface, and gradually converting it into a marshy and unhealthy district, which was at last very greatly reduced in population and productiveness. It had, in fact, become so desolate that even the swallow had deserted it. [Footnote: This curious fact is thus stated in the preface to Fossombroni (Memorie sopra la Val di Chiana, edition of 1835, p. xiii.), from which also I borrow most of the data hereafter given with respect to that valley: "It is perhaps not universally known, that the swallows, which come from the north [south] to spend the summer in our climate, do not frequent marshy districts with a malarious atmosphere. A proof of the restoration of salubrity in the Val di Chiana is furnished by these aerial visitors, which had never before been seen in those low grounds, but which have appeared within a few years at Forano and other points similarly situated."

Is the air of swamps destructive to the swallows, or is their absence in such localities merely due to the want of human habitations, near which this half-domestic bird loves to breed, perhaps because the house-fly and other insects which follow man are found only in the vicinity of his dwellings In almoust all European countries the swallow is protected, by popular opinion or superstition, from the persecution to which almost all other birds are subject. It is possible that this respect for the swallow is founded upon ancient observation of the fact just stated on the authority of Fossombroni. Ignorance mistakes the effect for the cause, and the absence of this bird may have been supposed to be the occasion, not the consequence, of the unhealthiness of particular localities. This opinion once adopted, the swallow would become a sacred bird, and in process of time fables and legends would be invented to give additional sanction to the prejudices which protected it. The Romans considered the swallow as consecrated to the Penates, or household gods, and according to Peretti (Le Serate del Villaggio, p. 168) the Lombard peasantry think it a sin to kill them, because they are le gallinelle del Signore, the chickens of the Lord.]

The bed of the Arno near Arezzo and that of the Paglia at the southern extremity of the Val di Chiana did not differ much in level. The general inclination of the valley was therefore small; it does not appear to have ever been divided into opposite slopes by a true watershed, and the position of the summit seems to have shifted according to the varying amount and place of deposit of the sediment brought down by the lateral streams which emptied into it. The length of its principal channel of drainage, and even the direction of its flow at any given point, were therefore fluctuating. Hence, much difference of opinion was entertained at different times with regard to the normal course of this stream, and, consequently, to the question whether it was to be regarded as properly an affluent of the Tiber or of the Arno.

The bed of the latter river at the bend has been eroded to the depth of thirty or forty feet, and that, apparently, at no very remote period. [Footnote: Able geologists infer from recent investigations, that, although the Arno flowed to the south within the pliocenic period, the direction of its course was changed at an earlier epoch than that supposed in the text.] If it were elevated to what was evidently original height, the current of the Arno would be so much above that of the Paglia as to allow of a regular flow from its channel to the latter stream, through the Val di Chiana, provided the bed of the valley had remained at the level which excavations prove it to have had a few centuries ago, before it was raised by the deposits I have mentioned. These facts, together with the testimony of ancient geographers which scarcely admits of any other explanation, are thought to prove that all the waters of the Upper Arno were originally discharged through the Val di Chiana into the Tiber, and that a part of them still continued to flow, at least occasionally, in that direction down to the days of the Roman empire, and perhaps for some time later. The depression of the bed of the Arno, and the raising of that of the valley by the deposits of the lateral torrents, finally cut off the branch of the river which had flowed to the Tiber, and all its waters were turned into its present channel, though the drainage of the principal part of the Val di Chiana appears to have been in a south-eastwardly direction until within a comparatively recent period.

In the sixteenth century the elevation of the bed of the valley had become so considerable, that in 1551, at a point about ten miles south of the Arno, it was found to be not less than one hundred and thirty feet above that river; then followed a level of ten miles, and then a continuous descent to the Paglia. Along the level portion of the valley was a boatable channel, and lakes, sometimes a mile or even two miles in breadth, had formed at various points farther south. At this period the drainage of the summit level might easily have been determined in either direction, and the opposite descents of the valley made to culminate at the north or at the south end of the level. In the former case, the watershed would have been ten miles south of the Arno; in the latter, twenty miles, and the division of the valley into two opposite slopes would have been not very unequal.

Various schemes were suggested at this time for drawing off the stagnant waters, as well as for the future regular drainage of the valley, and small operations for those purposes were undertaken with partial success; but it was feared that the discharge of the accumulated waters into the Tiber would produce a dangerous inundation, while the diversion of the drainage into the Arno would increase the violence of the floods to which that river was very subject, and no decisive steps were taken. In 1606 an engineer, whose name has not been preserved, proposed, as the only possible method of improvement, the piercing of a tunnel through the hills bounding the valley on the west to convey its waters to the Ombrone, but the expense and other objections prevented the adoption of this scheme. [Footnote: Morozzi, Dello stato dell' Arno, ii., pp. 39, 40.] The fears of the Roman Government for the safety of the basin of the Tiber had induced it to construct embankments across the portion of the valley lying within its territory, and these obstructions, though not specifically intended for that purpose, naturally promoted the deposit of sediment and the elevation of the bed of the valley in their neighborhood. The effect of this measure and of the continued spontaneous action of the torrents was, that the northern slope, which in 1551 had commenced at the distance of ten miles from the Arno, was found in 1605 to begin nearly thirty miles south of that river, and in 1645 it had been removed about six miles farther in the same direction. [Footnote: Morozzi, Dello stato, etc., dell' Arno, ii., pp. 39, 40.]

In the seventeenth century the Tuscan and Papal Governments consulted Galileo, Torricelli, Castelli, Cassini, Viviani, and other distinguished philosophers and engineers, on the possibility of reclaiming the valley by a regular artificial drainage. Most of these eminent physicists were of opinion that the measure was impracticable, though not altogether for the same reasons; but they seem to have agreed in thinking that the opening of such channels, in either direction, as would give the current a flow sufficiently rapid to drain the lands properly, would dangerously augment the inundations of the river—whether the Tiber or the Arno—into which the waters should be turned. The general improvement of the valley was now for a long time abandoned, and the waters were allowed to spread and stagnate until carried off by partial drainage, infiltration, and evaporation. Torricelli had contended that the slope of a large part of the valley was too small to allow it to be drained by ordinary methods, and that no practicable depth and width of canal would suffice for that purpose. It could be laid dry, he thought, only by converting its surface into an inclined plane, and he suggested that this might be accomplished by controlling the flow of the numerous torrents which pour into it, so as to force them to deposit their sediment at the pleasure of the engineer, and, consequently, to elevate the level of the area over which it should be spread. [Footnote: Torricelli thus expressed himself on this point: "If we content ourselves with what nature has made practicable to human industry, we shall endeavor to control, as far as possible, the outlets of these streams, which, by raising the bed of the valley with their deposits, will realize the fable of the Tagus and the Pactolus, and truly roll golden sands for him that is wise enough to avail himself of them."—Fossombroni, Memoris sopra la Val di China, p. 219.] This plan did not meet with immediate general acceptance, but it was soon adopted for local purposes at some points in the southern part of the valley, and it gradually grew in public favor and was extended in application until its final triumph a hundred years later.

In spite of these encouraging successes, however, the fear of danger to the valley of the Arno and the Tiber, and the difficulty of an agreement between Tuscany and Rome—the boundary between which states crossed the Val di Chiana not far from the half-way point between the two rivers—and of reconciling other conflicting interests, prevented the resumption of the projects for the general drainage of the valley until after the middle of the eighteenth century. In the meantime the science of hydraulics had become better understood, and the establishment of the natural law according to which the velocity of a current of water, and of course the proportional quantity discharged by it in a given time, are increased by increasing its mass, had diminished if not dissipated the fear of exposing the banks of the Arno to greater danger from inundations by draining the Val di China into it. The suggestion of Torricelli was finally adopted as the basis of a comprehensive system of improvement, and it was decided to continue and extend the inversion of the original flow of the waters, and to turn them into the Arno from a point as far to the south as should be found practicable. The conduct of the works was committed to a succession of able engineers who, for a long series of years, were under the general direction of the celebrated philosopher and statesman Fossombroni, and the success has fully justified the expectations of the most sanguine advocates of the scheme. The plan of improvement embraced two branches: the one, the removal of obstructions in the bed of the Arno, and, consequently, the further depression of the channel of that river, in certain places, with the view of increasing the rapidity of its current; the other, the gradual filling up of the ponds and swamps, and raising of the lower grounds of the Val di Chiana, by directing to convenient points the flow of the streams which pour down into it, and there confining their waters by temporary dams until the sediment was deposited where it was needed. The economical result of these operations has been, that in 1835 an area of more than four hundred and fifty square miles of pond, marsh, and damp, sickly low grounds had been converted into fertile, healthy, and well-drained soil, and, consequently, that so much territory has been added to the agricultural domain of Tuscany. But in our present view of the subject, the geographical revolution which has been accomplished is still more interesting. The climatic influence of the elevation and draining of the soil must have been considerable, though I do not know that an increase or a diminution of the mean temperature or precipitation in the valley has been established by meteorological observation. There is, however, in the improvement of the sanitary condition of the Val di Chiana, which was formerly extremely unhealthy, satisfactory proof of a beneficial climatic change. The fevers, which not only decimated the population of the low grounds but infested the adjacent hills, have ceased their ravages, and are now not more frequent than in other parts of Tuscany. The strictly topographical effect of the operations in question, besides the conversion of marsh into dry surface, has been the inversion of the inclination of the valley for a distance of thirty-five miles, so that this great plain which, within a comparatively short period, sloped and drained its waters to the south, now inclines and sends its drainage to the north. The reversal of the currents of the valley has added to the Arno a new tributary equal to the largest of its former affluents, and a most important circumstance connected with this latter fact is, that the increase of the volume of its waters has accelerated their velocity in a still greater proportion, and, instead of augmenting the danger from its inundations, has almost wholly obviated that source of apprehension. [Footnote: Arrian observes that at the junction of the Hydaspes and the Acesines, both of which are described as wide streams, "one very narrow river is formed of two confluents, and its current is very swift."—Arrian, Alex. Anab., vi., 4.

A like example is observed in the Anapus near Syracuse, which, below the junction of its two branches, is narrower, though swifter than either of them, and such cases are by no means unfrequent. The immediate effect of the confluence of two rivers upon the current below depends upon local circumstances, and especially upon the angle of incidence. If the two nearly coincide in direction, so as to include a small angle, the join current will have a greater velocity than the slower confluent, perhaps even than either of them. If the two rivers run in transverse, still more if they flow in more or less opposite, directions, the velocity of the principal branch will be retarded both above and below the junction, and at high water it may even set back the current of the affluent.

On the other hand, the diversion of a considerable branch from a river retards its velocity below the point of separation, and here a deposit of earth in its channel immediately begins, which has a tendency to turn the whole stream into the new bed. "Theory and the authority of all hydrographical writers combine to show that the channels of rivers undergo an elevation of bed below a canal of diversion."—Letter of Fossombroni, in Salvagnoli, Raccolta di Documenti, p. 32. See the early authorities and discussions on the principle stated in the text, in Frisi, Del modo di regolare i Fiumi e i Torrenti, libro iii., capit. i., and Mongotti, Idraulica, ii., pp. 88 et seqq., and see p. 498, note, ante.

In my account of these improvements I have chiefly followed Fossombroni, under whose direction they were principally executed. Many of Fossombroni's statements and opinions have been controverted, and in comparatively unimportant particulars they have been shown to be erroneous.—See Lombardini, Guida allo studio dell' Idrologia, cap. xviii., and same author, Esame degli Studi sul Tevere, Section 33.]

Between the beginning of the fifteenth century and the year 1761, thirty-one destructive floods of the Arno are recorded; between 1761, when the principal streams of the Val di Chiana were diverted into that river, and 1835, not one. [Footnote: Fossombroni, Memorie Idraulico-storiche, Introduzione, p. xvi. Between the years 1700 and 1799 the chroniclers record seventeen floods of the Arno, and twenty between 1800 and 1870, but none of these were of a properly destructive character except those in 1844, 1864, and 1870, and the ravages of this latter were chiefly confined to Pisa, and were occasioned by the bursting of a dike or wall. They are all three generally ascribed to extraordinary, if not unprecedented, rains and snows, but many inquirers attribute them to the felling of the woods in the valleys of the upper tributaries of the Arno since 1835. See a paper by Griffini, in the Italia Nuova, 18 Marzo, 1871.]

Results of Operations.

It is now a hundred years since the commencement of the improvements in the Val di Chiana, and those of the Maremma have been in more or less continued operation for above a generation. They have, as we have seen, produced important geographical changes in the surface of the earth and in the flow of considerable rivers, and their effects have been not less conspicuous in preventing other changes, of a more or less deleterious character, which would infallibly have taken place if they had not been arrested by the improvements in question.

The sediment washed into the marshes of the Maremma is not less than 12,000,000 cubic yards per annum. The escape of this quantity into the sea, which, is now almost wholly prevented, would be sufficient to advance the coast-line fourteen yards per year, for a distance of forty miles, computing the mean depth of the sea near the shore at twelve yards. It is true that in this case, as well as in that of other rivers, the sedimentary matter would not be distributed equally along the shore, and much of it would be carried out into deep water, or perhaps transported by the currents to distant coasts. The immediate effects of the deposit in the sea, therefore, would not be so palpable as they appear in this numerical form, but they would be equally certain, and would infallibly manifest themselves, first, perhaps, at some remote point, and afterwards more energetically at or near the outlets of the rivers which produced them. The elevation of the bottom of the sea would diminish the inclination of the beds of the rivers discharging themselves into it on that coast, and of course their tendency to overflow their banks and extend still further the domain of the marshes which border them would be increased in proportion.

It has been already stated that, in order to prevent the overflow of the valley of the Tiber by freely draining the Val di Chiana into it, the Papal authorities, long before the commencement of the Tuscan works, constructed strong barriers near the southern end of the valley, which detained the waters of the wet season until they could be gradually drawn off into the Paglia. They consequently deposited most of their sediment in the Val di Chiana and carried down comparatively little earth to the Tiber. The lateral streams contributing the largest quantities of sedimentary matter to the Val di Chiana originally flowed into that valley near its northern end; and the change of their channels and outlets in a southern direction, so as to raise that part of the valley by their deposits and thereby reverse its drainage, was one of the principal steps in the process of improvement.

We have seen that the north end of the Val di Chiana near the Arno had been raised by spontaneous deposit of sediment to such a height as to interpose a sufficient obstacle to all flow in that direction. If, then, the Roman dam had not been erected, or the works of the Tuscan Government undertaken, the whole of the earth, which has been arrested by those works and employed to raise the bed and reverse the declivity of the valley, would have been carried down to the Tiber and thence into the sea. The deposit thus created would, of course, have contributed to increase the advance of the shore at the mouth of that river, which has long been going on at the rate of three metres and nine-tenths (twelve feet and nine inches) per annum. [Footnote: See the careful estimates of Rozet, Moyens de forcer les Torrents, etc., pp. 42, 44.] It is evident that a quantity of earth, sufficient to effect the immense changes I have described in a wide valley more than thirty miles long, if deposited at the outlet of the Tiber, would have very considerably modified the outline of the coast, and have exerted no unimportant influence on the flow of that river, by raising its point of discharge and lengthening its channel.

The Coast of the Netherlands. It has been shown in a former section that the dikes of the Netherlands and the adjacent states have protected a considerable extent of coast from the encroachments of the sea, an have won a large tract of cultivable land from the dominion of the ocean waters. The immense results obtained from the operations of the Tuscan engineers in the Val di Chiana, and the Maremma have suggested the question, whether a different method of accomplishing these objects might not have been adopted with advantage. It has been argued, as in the case of the Po, that a system of transverse inland dikes and canals, upon the principle of those which have been so successfully employed in the Val di Chiana and in Egypt, might have elevated the low grounds above the ocean tides, by spreading over them the sediment brought down by the Rhine, the Maes, and the Scheld. If this process had been introduced in the Middle Ages, and constantly pursued to our times, the superficial and coast geography, as well as the hydrography of the countries in question, would undoubtedly have presented an aspect very different from their present condition; and by combining the process with a system of maritime dikes, which would have been necessary, both to resist the advance of the sea and to retain the slime deposited by river overflows, it is, indeed, possible that the territory of those states would have been as extensive as it now is, and, at the same time, somewhat elevated above its natural level.

The argument in favor of that method rests on the assumption that all the sea-washed earth, which the tides have let fall upon the shallow coast of the Netherlands, has been brought down by the rivers which empty upon those shores, and could have been secured by allowing those rivers to spread over the flats and deposit their sediment in still-water pools formed by cross-dikes like those of Egypt.

But we are ignorant of the proportions in which the marine deposits that form the soil of the polders have been derived from materials brought down by these rivers, or from other more remote sources. Much of the river slime has, no doubt, been transported by marine currents quite beyond the reach of returning streams, and it is uncertain how far this loss has been balanced by earth washed by the sea from distant shores and let fall on the coasts of the Netherlands and other neighboring countries.

We know little or nothing of the quantity of solid matter brought down by the rivers of Western Europe in early ages, but, as the banks of those rivers are now generally better secured against wash and abrasion than in former centuries, the sediment transported by them must be less than at periods nearer the removal of the primitive forests of their valleys, though certainly greater than it was before those forests were felled. Kladen informs us that the sedimentary matter transported to the sea by the Rhine would amount to a cubic geographical mile in five thousand years. [Footnote: Erdhunde, vol. i, p. 384. The Mississippi—a river "undercharged with sediment"—with a mean discharge of about ten times that of the Rhine, deposits a cubic geographical mile in thirty-three years.] The proportion of this suspended matter which, with our present means, could be arrested and precipitated upon the ground, is almost infinitesimal, for only the surface-water, which carries much less sediment than that at the bottom of the channel, would flow over the banks, and as the movement of this water, if not checked altogether, would be greatly retarded by the proposed cross-dikes, the quantity of solid matter which would be conveyed to a given portion of land during a single inundation would be extremely small. Inundations of the Rhine occur but once or twice a year, and high water continues but a few days, or even hours; the flood-tide of the sea happens seven hundred times in a year, and at the turn of the tide the water is brought to almost absolute rest. Hence, small as is the proportion of suspended matter in the tide-water, the deposit probably amounts to far more in a year than would be let fall upon the same area by the Rhine.

This argument, except as to the comparison between river and tide water, applies to the Mississippi, the Po, and most other great rivers. Hence, until that distant day when man shall devise means of extracting from rivers at flood, the whole volume of their suspended material and of depositing it at the same time on their banks, the system of cross-dikes and COLMATAGE must be limited to torrential streams transporting large proportions of sediment, and to the rivers of hot countries, like the Nile, where the saturation of the soil with water, and the securing of a supply for irrigation afterwards, are the main objects, while raising the level of the banks is a secondary consideration.



CHAPTER V.

THE SANDS.

Origin of Sand—Sand now Carried to the Sea—Beach Sands of Northern Africa—Sands of Egypt—Sand Dunes and Sand Plains—Coast Dunes—Sand Banks—Character of Dune Sand—Interior Structure of Dunes—Geological Importance of Dunes—Dunes on American Coasts—Dunes of Western Europe—Age, Character, and Permanence of Dunes—Dunes as a Barrier against the Sea—Encroachments of the Sea—Liimfjord—Coasts of Schleswig-Holstein, Netherlands, and France—Movement of Dunes—Control of Dunes by Man—Inland Dunes—Inland Sand Plains.



Origin of Sand.

Sand, which is found in beds or strata at the bottom of the sea or in the channels of rivers, as well as in extensive deposits upon or beneath the surface of the dry land, appears to consist essentially of the detritus of rocks. It is not always by any means clear through what agency the solid rock has been reduced to a granular condition; for there are beds of quartzose sand, where the sharp, angular shape of the particles renders it highly improbable that they have been formed by gradual abrasion and attrition, and where the supposition of a crushing mechanical force seems equally inadmissible. In common sand, the quartz grains are the most numerous; but this is not a proof that the rocks from which these particles were derived were wholly, or even chiefly, quartzose in character; for, in many composite rocks, as, for example, in the granitic group, the mica, feldspar, and hornblende are more easily decomposed by chemical action, or disintegrated, comminuted, and reduced to an impalpable state by mechanical force, than the quartz. In the destruction of such rocks, therefore, the quartz would survive the other ingredients, and remain unmixed, when they had been decomposed and recomposed into new mineralogical or chemical combinations, or been ground to slime and washed away by water currents.