SECTION II.

GENERAL HISTORICAL SUMMARY OF THE ORIGIN AND PROGRESS

OF IRRIGATION IN PIEDMONT.

There are two methods by which the facts to be subsequently given may be grouped. First, according to their succession in time, or in chronological order; or second, according to their succession in position, or in topographical order. Now, as many of the canals to be described were executed in different provinces at the same time, or in the same provinces at different times, it is evident that a rigid adherence to chronological order would lead us to move over the face of the country in a somewhat confused and unsatisfactory manner, and that an imperfect picture of the existing distribution of the irrigation system must be the inevitable result. It therefore appears to me to be the preferable plan to neglect the strict order of time, and to describe the various canals of each province according to their topographical position. By thus commencing from the western, and travelling regularly to the eastern limit of the irrigated plain, a clearer view of its present state will be obtained than the first-mentioned plan could give. I propose, therefore, describing in succession the canals of the Orco, the Dora-Baltea, the Sesia, the Agogna, the Terdoppio, and the Ticino, without special reference to the epochs of their original construction.

It may still, however, be interesting to sketch the historical progress of irrigation in Piedmont; and as, fortunately, this can be done in a few sentences, it will not detain us long to give it here.

The date of the most ancient among the existing canals of Piedmont ascends to the commencement of the fourteenth century—the same period, I may note in passing, at which the great canal-maker of India, the Emperor Feroze, was employed in the construction of the work which still bears his name. The Roggia, or canal Gattinara, derived from the Sesia, is a contemporary of the canal of Feroze, executed about the year 1320. In the course of the same century, but nearer to its close, the canals Busca and Santirana, deriving their supply also from the Sesia, were constructed. The canal Langosco was derived about the middle of the fourteenth century from the river Ticino, and completes the list of the works attributable to this period.

During the succeeding, or fifteenth century, considerable activity prevailed. In 1400, Duke John of Montferrat constructed the Canal del Rotto, drawing its supply from the Dora-Baltea, which then for the first time takes its place as a member of the Irrigation System of Piedmont. In 1468 the canal of Ivrea was drawn from the Dora-Baltea; but owing to certain difficulties of maintenance it was abandoned, after having flowed for about ninety years. Restored in the succeeding century, or about 1651, it has continued its useful services without interruption from that time to the present day. To the fifteenth century also belong the canals of the Commune of Gattinara, Mora, and Sforzesca. The only important work which dates from the sixteenth century is the canal of Caluso, a derivative from the river Orco. The restoration of the canal of Ivrea, formerly adverted to, is the sole work which I can trace to the seventeenth century. To the eighteenth belongs the canal of Cigliano, with some of its branches; and to the nineteenth, the canal of Charles Albert, which, however, I am sorry to add, has

proved, so far as its influence on irrigation is concerned, a very unsatisfactory work.

The most active period in the course of the five centuries during which the present canal system of Piedmont has existed, was the feudal eras of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The works then constructed were the results almost equally of the energy of the state and the enterprise of individual proprietors. It was under the dukes of Milan that the great canals of the Lumellina were made, as it was not until 1736 that the provinces of Novara and Mortara were separated from the Milanese. It was under the auspices of the princes of the house of Savoy that the canals of the Orco and the Dora-Baltea were executed, sometimes directly by the government, but most frequently under patents from the sovereign to different noble proprietors.

For a long series of years the system of canals thus called into existence was administered in a very rude and imperfect way. No surveillance was exercised over the distribution of the waters. Every man supplied his own wants very much according to his own wishes, for the times were troubled, and internal commotion and external war occupied the attention of the government too much to admit of much care being given to the regulation of public works. Very shortly after the construction of the canal of Ivrea, the first faint indication of some method in the distribution of the water is discernible; and under the reign of Philibert I., duke of Savoy, in the year 1474, we find a rude plan of regulated outlet prescribed for that canal. By slow and halting steps, modifications of this to be described hereafter-were gradually introduced, until we arrive at the metrical module of the present day.

The canals adverted to in this sketch are only the

leading arteries, as it were, of the system. During the time included between the commencement of the fourteenth and the middle of the nineteenth centuries, an immense number of smaller works, dependent on the great lines, were constructed. In fact, the importance of irrigation would naturally be recognised at once, and the execution of the works required to give it full effect would be limited only by the means of the people. The extent to which these have been employed is best shown by a glance at the map, which exhibits an almost countless number of channels, of which the special history, however, would present literally nothing whatever to interest us.

It was from the eastward-from the rich plains of Lombardy that the spirit of improvement spread. Developed first in the Lumellina as a part of the ancient Milanese, it crossed the Sesia in course of time, and finally worked its way onward to the banks of the Orco, where, in its great features, it may be said to have stopped, as farther to the westward but little has been done. Nearly five hundred and fifty years have been required to organise the existing canal system of Piedmont-to change its once arid plains or dreary marshes into sheets of cultivation. I would "point the moral" it indicates for us, who are only beginning our work, as it were; and would say, that we may have fair hopes and cheerful hearts in sight of what we have already done in a twentieth part of this time.

SECTION III.

CANALS OF THE RIVERS DORA-REPAIRA, STURA, AND ORCO.

The canals from the Dora-Repaira, and the Stura, in the province of Turin, are so small that I had some doubt as to the necessity for noticing them at all. It may, however, be as well to do so briefly. Those derived from the Dora are designed chiefly for the use of the royal domain, and their waters are employed either as the moving power in the royal manufactories of different kinds, or (though to a very limited extent) in irrigation.

The canal of the Veneria Reale, which is the most important, was constructed in 1750. It carries a volume of water, in summer time, amounting to about seventy cubic feet per second. Its length from its head near Pianezza is about eight miles, and during its course it irrigates about 500 acres of meadow land. It has twenty-one small bridges and aqueducts, the property of government, and two belonging to private parties. The charge for the use of water from it for irrigation ranges from nearly 2s. to 2s. 6d. per acre; and it is used as the motive force for machinery in two leather works, five silk manufactories, and three corn-mills.

The canal of the Royal Park, with its small subsidiary branches, is appropriated to the exclusive use of the government paper-mills, tobacco manufactories, &c. The main canal is about two and a half miles in length, with a discharge in summer time of about 200 cubic feet per second. The subsidiary channel is about one mile in length, with a volume of ninety cubic feet per second.