Chapter IV: The Waters (3)

The provisions of the laws in question are preventive rather than remedial; but some immediate effect may be expected to result from them, particularly if they are accompanied with certain other measures, the suggestion of which has been favorably received. The strong repugnance of the mountaineers to the application of a system which deprives them of a part of their pasturage--for the absolute exclusion of domestic animals is indispensable to the maintenance of an existing forest and to the formation of a new--is the most formidable obstacle to the execution of the laws of 1859-'60. It is proposed to compensate this loss by a cheap system of irrigation of lower pasture grounds, consisting in little more than in running horizontal furrows along the hillsides, thus converting the scarp of the hills into a succession of small terraces which, when once turfed over, are very permanent. Experience is said to have demonstrated that this simple process suffices to retain the water of rains, of snows, and of small springs and rivulets, long enough for the irrigation of the soil, thus increasing its product of herbage in a fivefold proportion, and that it partially checks the too rapid flow of surface water into the valleys, and, consequently, in some measure obviates one of the most prominent causes of inundations.[358] It is evident that, if such results are produced by this method, its introduction upon an extensive scale must also have the same climatic effects as other systems of irrigation.

Whatever may be the ultimate advantages of reclothing a large extent of the territory of France with wood, or of so shaping its surface as to prevent the too rapid flow of water over it, the results to be obtained by such processes can be realized in an adequate measure only after a long succession of years. Other steps must be taken, both for the immediate security of the lives and property of the present generation, and for the prevention of yet greater and remoter evils which are inevitable unless means to obviate them are found before it is forever too late. The frequent recurrence of inundations like those of 1856, for a single score of years, in the basins of the Rhone and the Loire, with only the present securities against them, would almost depopulate the valleys of those rivers, and produce physical revolutions in them, which, like revolutions in the political world, could never be made to "go backward."

Destructive inundations are seldom, if ever, produced by precipitation within the limits of the principal valley, but almost uniformly by sudden thaws or excessive rains on the mountain ranges where the tributaries take their rise. It is therefore plain that any measures which shall check the flow of surface waters into the channels of the affluents, or which shall retard the delivery of such waters into the principal stream by its tributaries, will diminish in the same proportion the dangers and the evils of inundation by great rivers. The retention of the surface waters upon or in the soil can hardly be accomplished except by the methods already mentioned, replanting of forests, and furrowing or terracing. The current of mountain streams can be checked by various methods, among which the most familiar and obvious is the erection of barriers or dams across their channels, at points convenient for forming reservoirs large enough to retain the superfluous waters of great rains and thaws. Besides the utility of such basins in preventing floods, the construction of them is recommended by very strong considerations, such as the meteorological effects of increased evaporable surface, the furnishing of a constant supply of water for agricultural and mechanical purposes, and, finally, their value as ponds for breeding and rearing fish, and, perhaps, for cultivating aquatic vegetables.

The objections to the general adoption of the system of reservoirs are these: the expense of their construction and maintenance; the reduction of cultivable area by the amount of surface they must cover; the interruption they would occasion to free communication; the probability that they would soon be filled up with sediment, and the obvious fact that when full of earth or even water, they would no longer serve their principal purpose; the great danger to which they would expose the country below them in case of the bursting of their barriers;[359] the evil consequences they would occasion by prolonging the flow of inundations in proportion as they diminished their height; the injurious effects it is supposed they would produce upon the salubrity of the neighboring districts; and, lastly, the alleged impossibility of constructing artificial basins sufficient in capacity to prevent, or in any considerable measure to mitigate, the evils they are intended to guard against.

The last argument is more easily reduced to a numerical question than the others. The mean and extreme annual precipitation of all the basins where the construction of such works would be seriously proposed is already approximately known by meteorological tables, and the quantity of water, delivered by the greatest floods which have occurred within the memory of man, may be roughly estimated from their visible traces. From these elements, or from recorded observations, the capacity of the necessary reservoirs can be calculated. Let us take the case of the Ardeche. In the inundation of 1857, that river poured into the Rhone 1,305,000,000 cubic yards of water in three days. If we suppose that half this quantity might have been suffered to flow down its channel without inconvenience, we shall have about 650,000,000 cubic yards to provide for by reservoirs. The Ardeche and its principal affluent, the Chassezac, have, together, about twelve considerable tributaries rising near the crest of the mountains which bound the basin. If reservoirs of equal capacity were constructed upon all of them, each reservoir must be able to contain 54,000,000 cubic yards, or, in other words, must be equal to a lake 3,000 yards long, 1,000 yards wide, and 18 yards deep, and besides, in order to render any effectual service, the reservoirs must all have been empty at the commencement of the rains which produced the inundation.

Thus far, I have supposed the swelling of the waters to be uniform throughout the whole basin; but such was by no means the fact in the inundation of 1857, for the rise of the Chassezac, which is as large as the Ardeche proper, did not exceed the limits of ordinary floods, and the dangerous excess came solely from the headwaters of the latter stream. Hence reservoirs of double the capacity I have supposed would have been necessary upon the tributaries of that river, to prevent the injurious effects of the inundation. It is evident that the construction of reservoirs of such magnitude for such a purpose is financially, if not physically, impracticable, and when we take into account a point I have just suggested, namely, that the reservoirs must be empty at all times of apprehended flood, and, of course, their utility limited almost solely to the single object of preventing inundations, the total inapplicability of such a measure in this particular case becomes still more glaringly manifest.

Another not less conclusive fact is that the valleys of all the upland tributaries of the Ardeche descend so rapidly, and have so little lateral expansion, as to render the construction of capacious reservoirs in them quite impracticable. Indeed, engineers have found but two points in the whole basin suitable for that purpose, and the reservoirs admissible at these would have only a joint capacity of about 70,000,000 cubic yards, or less than one ninth part of what I suppose to be required. The case of the Ardeche is no doubt an extreme one, both in the topographical character of its basin and in its exposure to excessive rains; but all destructive inundations are, in a certain sense, extreme cases also, and this of the Ardeche serves to show that the construction of reservoirs is not by any means to be regarded as a universal panacea against floods.

Nor, on the other hand, is this measure to be summarily rejected. Nature has adopted it on a great scale, on both flanks of the Alps, and on a smaller, on those of the Adirondacks and lower chains, and in this as in many other instances, her processes may often be imitated with advantage. The validity of the remaining objections to the system under discussion depends on the topography, geology, and special climate of the regions where it is proposed to establish such reservoirs. Many upland streams present numerous points where none of these objections, except those of expense and of danger from the breaking of dams, could have any application. Reservoirs may be so constructed as to retain the entire precipitation of the heaviest thaws and rains, leaving only the ordinary quantity to flow along the channel; they may be raised to such a height as only partially to obstruct the surface drainage; or they may be provided with sluices by means of which their whole contents can be discharged in the dry season and a summer crop be grown upon the ground they cover at high water. The expediency of employing them and the mode of construction depend on local conditions, and no rules of universal applicability can be laid down on the subject.

It is remarkable that nations which we, in the false pride of our modern civilization, so generally regard as little less than barbarian, should have long preceded Christian Europe in the systematic employment of great artificial basins for the various purposes they are calculated to subserve. The ancient Peruvians built strong walls, of excellent workmanship, across the channels of the mountain sources of important streams, and the Arabs executed immense works of similar description, both in the great Arabian peninsula and in all the provinces of Spain which had the good fortune to fall under their sway. The Spaniards of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, who, in many points of true civilization and culture, were far inferior to the races they subdued, wantonly destroyed these noble monuments of social and political wisdom, or suffered them to perish, because they were too ignorant to appreciate their value, or too unskilful as practical engineers to be able to maintain them, and some of their most important territories were soon reduced to sterility and poverty in consequence.

Another method of preventing or diminishing the evils of inundation by torrents and mountain rivers, analogous to that employed for the drainage of lakes, consists in the permanent or occasional diversion of their surplus waters, or of their entire currents, from their natural courses, by tunnels or open channels cut through their banks. Nature, in many cases, resorts to a similar process. Most great rivers divide themselves into several arms in their lower course, and enter the sea by different mouths. There are also cases where rivers send off lateral branches to convey a part of their waters into the channel of other streams.[360] The most remarkable of these is the junction between the Amazon and the Orinoco by the natural canal of the Cassiquiare and the Rio Negro. In India, the Cambodja and the Menam are connected by the Anam; the Saluen and the Irawaddi by the Panlaun. There are similar examples, though on a much smaller scale, in Europe. The Tornea and the Calix rivers in Lapland communicate by the Tarando, and in Westphalia, the Else, an arm of the Haase, falls into the Weser.

The change of bed in rivers by gradual erosion of their banks is familiar to all, but instances of the sudden abandonment of a primitive channel are by no means wanting. At a period of unknown antiquity, the Ardeche pierced a tunnel 200 feet wide and 100 high, through a rock, and sent its whole current through it, deserting its former bed, which gradually filled up, though its course remained traceable. In the great inundation of 1827, the tunnel proved insufficient for the discharge of the water, and the river burst through the obstructions which had now choked up its ancient channel, and resumed its original course.[361]

It was probably such facts as these that suggested to ancient engineers the possibility of like artificial operations, and there are numerous instances of the execution of works for this purpose in very remote ages. The Bahr Jusef, the great stream which supplies the Fayoum with water from the Nile, has been supposed, by some writers, to be a natural channel; but both it and the Bahr el Wady are almost certainly artificial canals constructed to water that basin, to regulate the level of Lake Moeris, and possibly, also, to diminish the dangers resulting from excessive inundations of the Nile, by serving as waste-weirs to discharge a part of its surplus waters. Several of the seven ancient mouths of the Nile are believed to be artificial channels, and Herodotus even asserts that King Menes diverted the entire course of that river from the Libyan to the Arabian side of the valley. There are traces of an ancient river bed along the western mountains, which give some countenance to this statement. But it is much more probable that the works of Menes were designed rather to prevent a natural, than to produce an artificial, change in the channel of the river.

Two of the most celebrated cascades in Europe, those of the Teverone at Tivoli and of the Velino at Terni, owe, if not their existence, at least their position and character, to the diversion of their waters from their natural beds into new channels, in order to obviate the evils produced by their frequent floods. Remarkable works of the same sort have been executed in Switzerland, in very recent times. Until the year 1714, the Kander, which drains several large Alpine valleys, ran, for a considerable distance, parallel with the Lake of Thun, and a few miles below the city of that name emptied into the river Aar. It frequently flooded the flats along the lower part of its course, and it was determined to divert it into the Lake of Thun. For this purpose, two parallel tunnels were cut through the intervening rock, and the river turned into them. The violence of the current burst up the roof of the tunnels, and, in a very short time, wore the new channel down not less than one hundred feet, and even deepened the former bed at least fifty feet, for a distance of two or three miles above the tunnel. The lake was two hundred feet deep at the point where the river was conducted into it, but the gravel and sand carried down by the Kander has formed at its mouth a delta containing more than a hundred acres, which is still advancing at the rate of several yards a year. The Linth, which formerly sent its waters directly to the Lake of Zurich, and often produced very destructive inundations, was turned into the Wallensee about forty years ago, and in both these cases a great quantity of valuable land was rescued both from flood and from insalubrity.

In Switzerland, the most terrible inundations often result from the damming up of deep valleys by ice slips or by the gradual advance of glaciers, and the accumulation of great masses of water above the obstructions. The ice is finally dissolved by the heat of summer or the flow of warm waters, and when it bursts, the lake formed above is discharged almost in an instant, and all below is swept down to certain destruction. In 1595, about a hundred and fifty lives and a great amount of property were lost by the eruption of a lake formed by the descent of a glacier into the valley of the Drance, and a similar calamity laid waste a considerable extent of soil in the year 1818. On this latter occasion, the barrier of ice and snow was 3,000 feet long, 600 thick, and 400 high, and the lake which had formed above it contained not less than 800,000,000 cubic feet. A tunnel was driven through the ice, and about 300,000,000 cubic feet of water safely drawn off by it, but the thawing of the walls of the tunnel rapidly enlarged it, and before the lake was half drained, the barrier gave way and the remaining 500,000,000 cubic feet of water were discharged in half an hour. The recurrence of these floods has since been prevented by directing streams of water, warmed by the sun, upon the ice in the bed of the valley, and thus thawing it before it accumulates in sufficient mass to threaten serious danger.

In the cases of diversion of streams above mentioned, important geographical changes have been directly produced by those operations. By the rarer process of draining glacier lakes, natural eruptions of water, which would have occasioned not less important changes in the face of the earth, have been prevented by human agency.

The principal means hitherto relied upon for defence against river inundations has been the construction of dikes along the banks of the streams, parallel to the channel and generally separated from each other by a distance not much greater than the natural width of the bed.[362] 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 infiltration; but such ramparts are enormously costly in original construction and maintenance, and, as we have already seen, the filling up of the bed of the river in its lower course, by sand and gravel, involves the necessity of occasionally incurring new expenditures in increasing the height of the banks.[363] 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 wide 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.[364]

For these reasons, many experienced engineers are of opinion that the system of longitudinal dikes ought to be abandoned, or, where that cannot be done without involving too great a sacrifice of existing constructions, their elevation should be much reduced, so as to present no obstruction to the lateral spread of extraordinary floods, and 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, and 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 thus retarding the flow of the river currents, and will, at the same time, secure the deposit of fertilizing slime upon all the soil covered by the flood.

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.[365] 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. 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 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 sides of the stream, 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 downward, 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.[366]

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;[367] 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.[368] 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 would have accumulated inexhaustible stores of the richest soil, and spread them out in plains above the reach of ordinary floods.[369]

_Consequences if the Nile had been Diked._

If a system of continuous lateral dikes, like those of the Po, had 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 the waters of the annual inundation consequently 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 "wisdom of Egypt" taught her children 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 ever bestowed upon a people.[370]

The valley of the Po has probably not been cultivated or inhabited so long as that of the Nile, but embankments have been employed on its lower course for at least two thousand years, and for many centuries they have been connected in a continuous chain. I have pointed out in a former chapter the effects produced on the geography of the Adriatic by the deposit of river sediment in the sea at the mouths of the Po, the Adige, and the Brenta. If these rivers had been left unconfined, like the Nile, and allowed to spread their muddy waters at will, according to the laws of nature, the slime they have carried to the coast would have been chiefly distributed over the plains of Lombardy. Their banks 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 spared a reasonable proportion of the forests of the Alps, and not attempted to control the natural drainage of the surface, the Po 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.[371]

The Nile is larger than all the rivers of Lombardy together,[372] it drains a basin twenty 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, not exceed the truth if we suppose the annually inundated surface of Egypt to have been elevated, upon an average, ten feet, within the last 5,000 years, or twice and a half the period during which the history of the Po is known to us.[373]

We may estimate the present actually cultivated area of Egypt at about 5,500 square statute miles. As I have computed in a note on page 372, that area is not more than half as extensive as 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 extent of soil it does not now reach. We may, then, adopt a mean between the two quantities, and we shall probably come near the truth if we assume the convenient number of 7,920 square statute miles as the average measure of the inundated land during the historical period. Taking the deposit on this surface at ten feet, the river sediment let fall on the soil of Egypt within the last fifty centuries would amount to fifteen cubic miles.

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 been carried out to sea.[374] This would have been a considerable quantity; for the Nile holds earth in suspension even at low water, a much larger proportion during the flood, and irrigation must have been carried on during the whole year. The precise amount which would have been thus distributed over the soil is matter of conjecture, but three cubic miles is certainly a liberal estimate. This would leave twelve cubic miles as the quantity which embankments would have compelled the Nile to transport to the Mediterranean 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.[375]

_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 seaward 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 mart of Populonia has not 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.[376]

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 success 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 a very active cause of the development of malarious influences.[377]

_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 southeastward to the vicinity of Arezzo. It here sweeps round to the northwest, 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 southeastward 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.[378]

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. If it were elevated to what was evidently its 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 and of the Arno itself, 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 principal drainage of the Val di Chiana appears to have been in a southeastwardly 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 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 project.[379] The fears of the Roman Government for the security of the valley of the Tiber had induced it to construct barriers across that part of the channel which lay 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.[380]

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.[381] 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 halfway 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 mean time 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 Chiana 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 certain 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. 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.[382]

_Improvements in the Tuscan Maremme._

In the improvements of the Tuscan Maremma, more formidable difficulties have been encountered. The territory to be reclaimed was more extensive; the salubrious places of retreat for laborers and inspectors were more remote; the courses of the rivers to be controlled were longer and their natural inclination less rapid; some of them, rising in wooded regions, transported comparatively little earthy matter,[383] and above all,

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 joint 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. 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.[384]

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,[385] 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 Maremme, 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.[386] 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 Maremme. 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 maritima_, 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, and are now in successful progress.