of the great
floods of Moray. The inundation covered a space of something more than
twenty miles in the Plain of Forres, and, as it was expressively remarked
by one of the sufferers, "Before these floods was the Garden of Eden and
behind them a desolate wilderness." And how often did the beautiful
expression of the Psalmist occur to them: "The floods have lifted up, O
Lord, the floods have lifted up their voice; the floods lift up their
waves. The Lord on high is mightier than the noise of many waters; yea,
than the mighty waves of the sea." Ps. xciii. 3, 4.

But it is not in Scotland alone that the terrors of the floods are
experienced. All rivers which rise in high and cold regions, and pass
into warm lowlands, are naturally very liable to overflow their bounds.
A remarkable example is afforded by the river Rhone, which rises in the
glaciers of Switzerland; and, after passing through the lake of Geneva,
descends into the south-eastern departments of France,--a very level
district, where the climate is mild and genial. Rapid meltings of the
ice in Switzerland, or heavy falls of rain or snow in that country,
greatly affect this river; and never, perhaps, were the effects more
dreadful than in the inundations of 1840. At Lyons, where the Rhone
joins the Saone, the most lamentable scenes took place. Not only were
the whole of the low-lying lands in the vicinity of the city completely
desolated, hundreds of houses overturned, and many cattle swept away, but
the waters reached the city itself, bursting into the gas conduits, and
thus leaving the people in darkness, and rising to a great height in the
streets. The destruction of property, both in-doors and out-of-doors,
was immense, and the loss of life appalling. Charitable people and
public servants went about in boats laden with provisions, which were
sent, at the expense of the magistrates and clergy, to the starving
families pent up in their several abodes, where many of them remained in
total darkness by night, and under hourly expectation that the
foundations of their houses would give way beneath the rushing waters.
In fact, numbers of houses, and even whole streets, were in this way
sapped and overturned. Some of the people had fled to the heights near
the city, at the first rising of the waters, but there they were reduced
to the greatest extremities for want of food, and signal shots were heard
from them continually. This miserable state of things last