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Show 232 DELTA OF TilE RIIONE. along the northern and western shores of the llaltic is sl?wly d insensibly rising! No countries have been more entirely afrne e from earthquakes since the times of auth entl·C . h'I story t h an Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. In common With our own · 1 nd and indeed with almost every spot on the globe, they IS a , ' · · d d have experienced some slight shocks at certam pcno s,. as ur. • o· tile earthquake of Lisbon, and on a few other occasions, but mthbes e may rather be considered as prolonged VI' b rati·O ns m· t he crust of the earth, extending in the manner of sou~1ds through the air to almost indefinite distances, than as those vwlent movements which in the great regions of active volcanos change, from time to time, the relative level of land and sea. Delta of the Rhone.-We may now . turn our attention to some of the principal deltas of the Mediterranean, for no other inland sea affords so many examples of accessions of .ne": lands at the mouths of rivers within the records of authentic history. We have already considered the lacustt~ine .delta of the Rhone in Switzerland, and we shall now descnbe 1ts contemporaneous marine delta. Scarcely has the river passed out of the Leman Lake, before its pure waters are again ~lied with san~ and sediment by the impetuous Arve descendmg from. ~he h1g~est Alps, and bearing along in its c~rrent the gramtlc detntus annually carried down by the glaCiers .of ~ont Diane. ~he Rhone afterwards receives vast contnbutwns of transported matter from the Alps of Dauphiny, and the primary ~nd vol· canic mountains of Central France; and when at le~gth It e~t~rs the Mediterranean, it discolours its blue waters With ~ wh1tish sediment for the distance of between six and seven miles fro~ its mouth, throughout which space the current. of fr~sh-w~ter Is perceptible. Strabo's description of the delta 1s so mappl~cab!e to its present confiO'uration, as to attest a complete alteratiOn m the physical featur~s of the country since the Augustan. age. It appears however that the head of the delta, or the pom~ at which it"'b;O'ins to r~mify, bas remained unaltered since the ~Ime of Pliny: fo~ he states that the Rhone divided itself at Arles mto two arms. This is the case at present; o.ne of. the br~n~hes being now:"·called Le petit Rhone, which Is agam subdlv~ed before ent;ring the Mediterranean. T~e a?vance of ~he d ~e of the delta, in the last eighteen centuries, Is demonsttatc y DELTA OF THE RHONE. 233 many curious antiquarian monuments. The most striking of these is the great detour made by the old Roman road from U gernum to Beziers (part of the hiO'h road between Aix • b ' Aqure Sextuc, and Nismes, Nemausus). It is clear that, when t.his was :first ~onstructed, it was impossible to pass in a direct lme, as now, across the delta, and that either the sea or marshes intervened in a tract now consisting of terra firma*. Astruc also remarks, that all the places on the low lands, lying to the north of the old Roman road between Nismes and Beziers, have na~es of Celtic origin evidently given to them by the first inhabitants of the country; whereas the places lying south of that road, towards the sea, have names of Latin derivation, and were clearly founded after the Roman language had been introduced. Another proof, also, of the great extent of land which has come into existence since the Romans conquered and colonized Gau] is derived from the fact, that the Roman writers never mentio~ the thermal waters of Balaruc in the delta, although they were well acquainted wit~ those of Aix and others, still more distant, and attached great Importance to them, as they invariably did to all hot springs. The waters of Balaruc, therefore, must have formerly issued under the sea-a common phenomenon on the borders of the Mediterranean; and on the advance of the delta they continued to flow out through the new deposits. Among the more direct proofs of the increase of land, we find that Me~e, described under the appellation of Mesua Collis by Pompomus Mela t, and stated by him to be nearly an island is ~ow far inland. Notre Dame des Ports, also, was a harb~ur m 898, but is now a league from the shore. Psalmodi was an islan~ in 815, and is now two leagues from the sea. Several old hnes of towers and sea-marks occur at diHeren t distances from the present coast, all indicating the successive retreat of the sea, for each line has in its turn become useless to mariners w?ich may well be conceived when we state that the tower of Tignaux, erected on the shore so late as the year 1737 is already a French mile remote from it+· ' By the confluence of the Rhone and the currents of the * ~em. d'Astruc, cited by Von Hoff, vol. i., p. 228. t Ltb. II., c. v. p. ~V~.ouche, Chorogro.phio et Hist. de Provence, vol. i., p. 23, cited by HofF, vol. i. 1 |