AND THE FLOODS CAME.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 771, 21 March 1910, Page 8

AND THE FLOODS CAME.

HOW THE SEINE INUNDATED PARIS. REMARKABLE SCENES IN THE CITY* "Preoccupied by th/e historic struggle from which we are jnst emerging, we have scarcely realised' that Paris in particular, but many parts also of the provinces of Franco have been stricken by a great national disaster," writes the "Daily Telegraph" early in February. "Nothing worse in the way of natural calamity has been known eiinoe the failure of the vines.

"The swollen rivers, pouring north, and south,- and west, to the Channel, the Mediterranean, and the Bay, have risen to an almost unprecedented height, l and have broken bank to sweep through villages and cities, and drown the lower country far and wide. In Paris lamentable, yet wonderful, scenes have baffled the descriptive power of every pen. The Republic has the whole world's sympathies, and grave and justly absorbing as our own crisis has been, we.awake with something like a shock of remorse to the knowledge that we have seemed unheeding while a transformed and terrible Seine has been spreading desolation in the fairest city that exists. ''■

Explanation of the Floods. "Even in 1876 the • river tobb to •an alarming extent, and wrought much damage. But the floods of the last week are matched by nothing in living memory, and it is not probable that they have ever been surpassed. We hope that superstitious people will not take the approach of two comets as harbingers of a double share of trouble for nations. The explanation is far simpler. France, as a whole,' shelves away to the seas from the central mountain masses of the Continent. Over the. Alps, and upon that Burgundian plateau throwing off rivers in all directions—which, as M. Hanotaux once said in a fascinating study, has been the geographical and, therefore, the historical heart of France—severe weather raged throughout last week. There wore tempests of rain and great snowfalls. Huge. avalanches oracked and thundered in their manner down the mountainsides, sending up clouds ,of light spindrift like the spray of cataracts. . The Alpine Snowstorms Help. "Down below, the snowstorms piled up the flakes a couple of vardsthick and more in the valley levels: Then this enormous discharge upon thg central masses was soon hurrying down in flood by every outlet upon the country outside the Alpine fastnesses. •At first Paris suspected no : danger. The scenes elsewhere were desperate,, but they seemed likely to affect'wily the region-of France draining south. At Besancon, the Doubs rose twenty feet in. its channel, and threatened to sweep, away from its shores all the dwellings of men. At Lyons_ there was a mighty press of Waters, and scenes of suffering and hardship, with considerable loss of life, had. already excited the greatest sympathy in Paris, when, to the consternation of its people,, the Seine showed unmistakable signs of raging in its turn.

"By the end of last week there was every cause for excitement and apprehension, and, long after the deluge in the south had began to subside, the Seine, made wide and wild by the volumes. of flood water sweeping down all its. tributaries towards the main channel, was threatening a tremendous calamity. Amazing Scenes.

"The Seine was,up at last to three times its usual height, and its roaring, surging breadth presented such a spectacle as no one who knows Paris had ever seen or imagined. A tawny tide shot the bridges, bearing along barrels, furniture, ■ every sort of forlorn and nondescript wreckage, the' evidence of devasta-tion-already wrought in the upper reaches of the main stream and its tributaries.' The city felt' itself-in:danger, and soon Paris and its 1 suburbs adjacent tohtheriver were flooded. At first no one realised the extent of this insurrection of waters. .Curious faoes hung over the retaining walls and : the bridges to watch the flood rising and the piers sinking deeper l and deeper. But the: rise went from sft. to 10ft., to 20ft. The river rose to the very head of the arches. The basements of the electric-light works were flooded, and so. was the crypt of Notre Dame, showing that the elements in their wrath make no distinction between, ancient and modern institutions. The water poured into the underground railways. It invaded the railway station on the Quai! d'Orsay, turned the interior into a deep pool, and at last pulled down the arches and tore away towards the Boulevard St. Germain. ,

Chamber of Deputies Invaded. ."To the south the lower rooms in the Chamber of Deputies were invaded. ~"The archives of the Palais de Justice Were swamped, and had to ; be salvaged out of several feet .of water, while-the prison cells were rendered untenable. The cellars of the Foreign Office became cistern's; and the German Embassy was not spared. A strong embankment had to be built to save the Louvre. In the suburbs boats are plying in the streets, and while shivering fugitives voyage mournfully away- with what they have rescued, others' more obstinate; who at first refused to move, call at last from upper windows for help. In the meantime, the wreckage batters against the tops of the bridges, and we. can well .believe that, at night the broad waste of waters charging through the heart of Paris in cold moonlight must be strange and great. We need not.say that ■ the .distress has been pitiable, and the loss enormous."