mud has been hard at work, doing its
level best to fill those great ice-worn bowls up again. Near the mouth
of each main stream it has already succeeded in spreading a fan-shaped
delta. I will not insult you by asking you at the present time of day
whether you have been over the St. Gothard. In this age of _trains de
luxe_ I know to my cost everybody has been everywhere. No chance of
pretending to superior knowledge about Japan or Honolulu; the tourist
knows them. Very well, then; you must remember as you go past
Bellinzona--revolutionary little Bellinzona with its three castled
crags--you look down upon a vast mud flat by the mouth of the Ticino.
Part of this mud flat is already solid land, but part is mere marsh or
shifting quicksand. That is the first stage in the abolition of the
lakes: the mud is annihilating them.

Maggiore, indeed, least fortunate of the three main sheets, is being
attacked by the insidious foe at three points simultaneously. At the
upper end, the Ticino, that furious radical river, has filled in a
large arm, which once spread far away up the valley towards Bellinzona.
A little lower down, the Maggia near Locarno carries in a fresh
contribution of mud, which forms another fan-shaped delta, and
stretches its ugly mass half across the lake, compelling the steamers
to make a considerable detour eastward. This delta is rapidly extending
into the open water, and will in time fill in the whole remaining space
from bank to bank, cutting off the upper end of the lake about Locarno
from the main basin by a partition of lowland. This upper end will then
form a separate minor lake, and the Ticino will flow out of it across
the intervening mud flat into the new and smaller Maggiore of our
great-great-grandchildren. If you doubt it, look what the torrent of
the Toce, the third assailing battalion of the persistent mud force,
has already done in the neighbourhood of Pallanza. It has entirely cut
off the upper end of the bay, that turns westward towards the Simplon,
by a partition of mud; and this isolated upper bit forms now in our own
day a separate lake, the Lago di Mergozzo, divided from the main sheet
by an uninteresting mud bank. In process of time, no doubt, the whole
of Maggiore will be similarly filled in by the advancing mud sheet, and
will become a level alluvial plain, surrounded by mountains, and
greatly admired by the astute Piedmontese cultivator.

What is going on in Maggiore is going on equall