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The lower rivers, and all the streams which descend from the less elevated mountains and hills, also produce effects, upon the districts through which they flow, more or less analogous to those of the torrents from the higher mountains. When these rivers are swollen by great rains, they attack the base of the earthy or sandy hills which they meet with in their course, and carry their fragments to be deposited upon the lower grounds, and which are thus, in some degree, raised by each succeeding inundation. Finally, when the rivers reach great lakes or the sea, and when that rapidity, which carried off and kept in suspension the particles of mud comes to cease entirely, these particles are deposited at the sides of their mouths, where they form low grounds, by which the shores are prolonged. And if these shores are such, that the sea also throws up sand upon them, and thus contributes to their increase; there are created, as it were, provinces, and even entire kingdoms, which usually become the most fertile, and speedily the richest, in the world, if their rulers permit human industry to exert itself in peace.