that no time could ever restore their town to prosperity, or re-clothe their fields with verdure. Yet, only fifteen years afterwards, when I again visited this scene of utter, and, as it seemed, hopeless desolation, I could scarcely, by any effort of the imagination recall the spot to my mind, or be persuaded that it really was the same ground I had seen laid waste. I knew very well, because I found it so set down in memorandums made on the spot, that a huge debacle, or mountain torrent, had burst over the hapless village, swept away all its herds and flocks, utterly destroyed its gardens and fields, drowned not a few of the inhabitants, and caused infinite distress; and I well remembered thinking it almost impossible that any length of time could effectually remove the traces of this gigantic misfortune. In spite of this prophecy, the only circumstance which I could now discover to mark the event of which I supposed the visible effects were to exist for ages, consisted in a black line painted on the wall of one of the hotels, at the height of ten feet from the ground, to point out to travellers that such was the limit to which the inundation had reached! The fields were all again matted thickly with verdure; the hedges and dividing walls appeared never to have been disturbed; flower-gardens, and kitchengardens, and grass plots smiled on every side of the happy valley; apple-trees laden with fruit, and

rows of tall poplars, marked out many lines of new and better roads than before, leading from new bridges which formerly had no existence! On examining matters more closely, I discovered one, and only one, remarkable trace of the debacle. All the old trees remained still stripped of their bark on the side which had faced the stream; and though a new coating had gradually formed itself, the rough handling of the torrent was still deeply marked on the trunks of all the trees which had been alive at that period, and had possessed strength enough to resist the flood. In one of the gardens, also, I came upon an erratic block or boulder of granite, so nearly hid in a mass of flowers and foliage, that I could not for some time recognise it as one of my old friends of the Dranse flood. So many young trees had been planted, and so many new houses built, and such had been the regeneration of the cornfields, vineyards, and orchards, that it required the retrospective, theoretical, optics of a geologist to discover any symptoms of diluvian action at all. Indeed, I much question whether even a practised geologist, unless put upon his guard and his curiosity roused, would now be able to infer from the existing appearances, that such a catastrophe had occurred; and we certainly might defy him to affix a date thereto. Even I, who can almost say that I witnessed the catastrophe, and took a careful survey of

the attendant circumstances when they were all fresh and obvious, could scarcely help fancying that the account I had myself recorded, and which I carried in my hand, must have been exaggerated, though written in good faith, and, if anything, short of the reality.

When we consider how effectually the lapse of a very few years has thus destroyed all the palpable evidences of a phenomenon, which, though on a small scale, was of a most decided character,— we ought to recollect under what disadvantages a geologist must often come to the investigation of those still more extensive and infinitely more varied revolutions in the earth's surface, which form the ordinary topics of inquiry in this interesting branch of philosophical inquiry.

In the first place, enormous periods of time may have elapsed since the spot about which he is speculating may have been convulsed by its last earthquake, or since it was overwhelmed by its last debacle. In the next, it may well be asked, how can he hope to make due allowance for those countless antecedent convulsions or catastrophes which may either have rent the interior of the ground, or modified its surface preparatory to the last arrangement which he is seeking to account for, and without some knowledge of which it is very difficult to draw any safe conclusion?

These difficulties, however, only show the importance of extending and varying our researches, and above all, of trying to observe with our own eyes the phenomena of existing cause, and learning what nature is actually doing-and thence inferring, by the only legitimate course of geological induction, what she has done in the countless ages of times past.

CHAPTER IV.

THE JARDIN.

QUICKENED in our curiosity by the animating though distressing scenes we had witnessed at Martigny, and cheered by the brilliancy of a hot day early in August, we set out from that place over the pass called the Tête Noire, for Chamouny, our intention being to make the complete tour of Mont Blanc from Martigny as a starting point, and then, after returning to that place, to proceed to Italy by the way of the Valais and the celebrated pass of the Simplon.

Although nothing very particular occured during the first morning of our grand circumbendibus, nor indeed on any of the eight arduous days which this expedition cost us, it may be said with truth, that scarcely a single hour of the whole period was passed without some novel and exciting cause of interest. I therefore venture strongly to recommend to any one who really wishes to see the beauties and wonders of the Alps, not to omit