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 lasted from the beginning of November until the 20th or 21st of the same month. At the same time the Rhone appeared like a succession of immense lakes from Lyons to Avignon, and from Avignon to the sea. A letter from Nismes, a little to the west of Avignon, thus described the scene:— “As far as the view extends we perceive but one sheet of water, in the midst of which appear the tops of trees and houses, with the miserable inhabitants perched upon them. At Valabrègue, an island on the Rhone, they have hung out a black banner from the church-yard, nearly two thousand persons being assembled in that spot, which is on an elevation. Steam-boats are attempting to carry bread to Valabrègue, and other similarly situated places, but can scarcely effect it from the inequality of the ground. For ten days the rains have never ceased. The space covered by the waters near Avignon is calculated at about thirty-six leagues in length and sixty leagues in breadth. Human bodies are seen passing continually on the waters.”