Adda River

“ Near to this place is Lake Larius,1610 which is filled by the river Adda, and afterwards flows out into the Po. The sources of this river, as well as those of the Rhine, rise in Mount Adulas.1611
7. These cities are situated high above the marshes; near to them is Patavium,1612 the finest of all the cities in this [Pg 318]
[CAS. 213] district, and which at the time of the late census1613 was said to contain 500 equites. Anciently it could muster an army of 120,000 men. ”

“ We drove through a desolate region,—huge, precipitous, bare Alps on either side,—in the midst, a marshy plain. The road is good, but difficult to keep up. The Adda flows into the lake, over a wide rock-strewn bed, broken into many channels. It is a mountain torrent, perpetually swollen by rain and snow into a cataract that breaks down all obstacles, and tears away the road. ”

“ Seventy to 80 miles to E., this river joins River Adda, the two forming Bahr El Arab. Hofrat El Nahas 1 200 Copper mines of Hofrat El Nahas lie 1 mile to S. of river, consist of number of shallow pits covering 1⁄2 mile square. Whole country round absolutely deserted, and no people have lived here since first rising of Mahdism, when Ibrahim Murad and his people—the former inhabitants—went to Kafikingi, which is now nearest village. 61.—RAGAA to DEIM ZUBEIR. By Colonel Sparkes, C.M.G., March, 1903. ”

“ From the summit of an inclined plane, eight thousand feet above the level of the sea, the eye travels for sixty miles over hundreds of little hills, embosomed in the widely diverging arc that defines the bay-like valley, in which is contained the whole 55 of the numberless streams that, joining the small river Dinkee near to Farree, flow into Lee Adu. This lake formed a bright feature of the scene, embosomed in the dark green belt of forest that marks the course of the Hawash; beyond which the sandy plains of Adal, blending with a colourless sky, constituted an horizon in which sight was lost. ”

“ From June to the middle of September the storms are terrific; every ravine becomes a raging torrent; trees are rooted up by the mountain streams swollen above their banks, and the Atbara becomes a vast river, bringing down with an overwhelming current the total drainage of four large rivers—the Settite, Royan, Salaam, and Angrab—in addition to its own original volume. Its waters are dense with soil washed from most fertile lands far from its point of junction with the Nile ”

“ The slavers have gone, the past is dead; but, knowing that wonderful river, I do not mind prophesying that, in spite of that dangerous surf, in spite of those threatening swamps, there is a big future in store for that lonely outpost of the Empire. That sixty-five miles of unimpeded waterway that lies between it and Akuse is not to be lightly disregarded, and the rich country goes far beyond that.
But, at present, there is not much to see at Addah. There is the swamp, apparently miles of it, there is a great, wide, mangrove-fringed river, and there are the never-to-be-forgotten mosquitoes. ”

“ It took him a day and a half of most laborious traveling to reach their first village, for they had to row up stream against the current, which is always strong and in some places terrible. The river runs between high mountains on both sides and in the middle of the stream there are great rocks, which make it very dangerous to go up—and still more so to go down, because the rapid current carries the boat against the rocks. ”

“ Cultivated vines grew upon the top of the hill; and they took pains to pluck for us the ripest grapes. We now had a complete view up the great vale of the Adda, to which the road that we had left conducts the traveller. Below us, on the other side, lay a wide green marshy plain, between the hill of Fuentes and the shores of the lake; which plain, spreading upwards, divides the lake; the upper small reach being called Chiavenna. ”

“ The smell of youthful meadows rises from either bank, the great trees sign to the skiff as it passes, and, descending from the trees and rising from the flowering hedges, the birds follow through the gold and rosy streaks (of sky and water) , mingling joyful loves. Between rich meadows the Adda flows on to lose itself in the Eridano; the untiring sun sinks to its setting.
“O sun, O flowing Adda!” exclaims the poet, “the soul floats through an elysium behind thee; where will it and mutual love lose themselves, O Lydia? ”

“ The river itself above Ras-el-Hudi is, during March and April, only a dry bed of white sand about 400 yards broad, but dotted with deep and beautifully clear pools, in which peculiarly brilliant fish and crocodiles, deprived of their stream, are crowded together. The atmosphere is more damp than by the Nile, and produces, in the terrible heat of the summer, profuse and exhausting perspiration. The natives dislike the water of the Atbara, and declare that it does not quench the thirst like that of the great river. ”

“ This great water artery receives no affluents for more than 1500 miles from its mouth—the Atbara River, meeting it above Berber, being the last tributary that joins it,—and throughout a considerable portion of its lower course, reckoned from the Nubian Desert northwards, the people can only live by congregating close to its banks. ”

“ The soil is very fertile and the water supply abundant. The principal irrigated sections of the State are in the Bear, Snake, Boisé, Payette and Weiser river valleys. These valleys lie at an altitude of from 700 to 5,000 feet. The Snake river, a tributary of the Columbia, and the Wood, Bruneau, Boisé, Payette, Weiser and Salmon rivers, its principal branches, form the drainage system of the S. portion of the State; the principal rivers of the N. part are the Spokane, St. Joe, St. Mary's, Clearwater, Cœur d'Alêne, Priest, and North Fork of the Columbia. ”

“ At this point there is not an atom of shade, not the semblance of a tree between the river and the stony desert. All the palm-groves cluster round the town of Edfou and the villages north and south. We were soon upon the dusty dike, which, as we proceeded, seemed to lift us higher and higher above the level plain, half bright-green, half sheeted with water, that lay in death-like repose, and reflected the sun's rays like a burnished mirror. ”

“ Abdul called the boys to look at the Atbara River.
"It is noticeable," said the Doctor, "as the first tributary of the Nile above its entrance into the Mediterranean. For fifteen hundred miles this great river does not receive so much as the tiniest brook, a condition of things without parallel with any other river of the world."
"The Atbara rises in Abyssinia," said Abdul, "near the base of two lofty mountains called Abba-Jaret and Amba-Hai. ”

“ Arrive at Adowa—Reception there—Visit Fremona and Ruins of Axum—Arrive at Siré. Adowa is situated on the declivity of a hill, on the west side of a small plain surrounded everywhere by mountains. Its situation accounts for its name, which signifies pass, or passage, being placed on the flat ground immediately below Ribieraini; the pass through which every body must go in their way from Gondar to the Red Sea. ”

“ The fish in the river Ada, I am told, consist of nearly the same species as those of the Nile in Upper Egypt. They are caught in wicker baskets, and used for food.—The natives have also a way of drying them, but it does not prevent their being so offensive to the smell, as to be useless to any but themselves. Numerous huts built of reeds are found on the bank of the river, as well for the use of the fishermen, as of those who ensnare the ferocious animals that come to drink its waters. ”

“ The inconstancy of the Indus through the delta is proverbial, and there is here both difficulty and danger in its navigation. It has in these days, among the people of Sinde, as bad a character as has been left to it by the Greek historians. The water is cast with such impetuosity from one bank to another, that the soil is constantly falling in upon the river; and huge masses of clay hourly tumble into the stream, often with a tremendous crash. ”

“ On the said road likewise are found two rivers in the first league,--a small one which is not permanent except in the rainy season; as is the case with an aguada which is found in the middle of the road on the slope of a ridge which is ascended in times of rain with some difficulty, although the other river, which is found about three leagues off, is permanent, the water of which, though it is somewhat sluggish, for they say it is a river of copper, nevertheless is very cool and raises very good fish, though not very large ones. ”

“ The ridge is clay covered to the flat summit, where knolls of gneiss project. Beyond the valley of the Odei, to the north, is a rolling forested country with hills clay-covered to the tops, rising by gradual slopes to about a hundred feet above the intervening valleys, that are themselves from twenty to fifty feet above the river level. For the next twenty-eight miles the river, flowing in a rock-bound basin, has the character of a long, narrow lake from half a mile to over a mile in width. ”

“ Individuals reproduce unexpectedly the traits of earlier ancestors, and ethnologists and criminologists frequently explain by “atavism” the occurrence of degenerate species of man; but the whole subject is complicated by other possible explanations of such phenomena, included in the scientific study of normal “variation.”
ATBARA (Bahr-el-Aswad, or Black River) , the most northern affluent of the river Nile, N.E. Africa. It rises in Abyssinia to the N.W. of Lake Tsana, unites its waters with a number of other rivers which also rise in the Abyssinian highlands, and flows north-west 800 m. ”

“ The stream is narrow here, and the sand-stone cliffs come down on both sides to the water’s edge. In some places there is space for a footpath; in others, none. There are also some sunken rocks in the bed of the river—upon one of which, by the way, a Cook’s steamer had struck two days before. But of such a mass as could have dammed the Nile, and, by its disruption, not only have caused the river to desert its bed at Philæ, [176] but have changed the whole physical and climatic conditions of Lower Nubia, there is no sign whatever. ”

“ At a quarter past ten, we incamped at Addergey, near a small rivulet called Mai-Lumi, the river of limes, or lemons, in a plain scarce a mile square, surrounded on each side with very thick wood in form of an amphitheatre. Above this wood, are bare, rugged, and barren mountains. Midway in the cliff is a miserable village, that seems rather to hang than to stand there, scarce 166 a yard of level ground being before it to hinder its inhabitants from falling down the precipice. ”

“ The Addax country is the Erg, the great region of sand-dunes, covered more or less thickly with vegetation according to situation and rains. This sand-dune country covers hundreds—it may be said thousands—of miles and the Addax follows the rains. In certain districts it is not uncommon for rain not to fall for several [87] years in succession. In one year the Addax are only found far south of Rhadamis and Aïn Taïba (S. of Ouargla) , in other years they follow the rain as far north as the southern borders of the Chott Djereed in the east and the neighbourhood of Aïn Taïba in the west. ”

“ One arm of the river must always have taken the present lower and deeper course; while the other must of necessity have run low—perhaps very nearly dry—as the inundation subsided every spring.
There remains no monumental record of this event; but the facts speak for themselves. The great channel is there. The old Nile mud is there—buried for the most part in sand, but still visible on many a rocky shelf and plateau between Assûan and Philæ. There are even places where the surface of the mass is seen to be scooped out, as if by the sudden rush of the departing waters. ”

“ At low water small boats only can go up stream. The Atbara is never navigable, the current during flood time being too swift for boats. Including the Sobat and the Bahr-el-Ghazal the navigable waters of the Nile and its affluents exceed 4000 m.
Owing to the cataracts and the partial closing of the Damietta and Rosetta branches for irrigation purposes, the Nile below Khartum is subsidiary, as a means of communication, to the railways and highroads. [6] Above Khartum the river is the chief channel of trade and commerce. ”

“ West of the Idaho Line, US 410 climbs upward from the irrigated orchards of the Snake River Valley through rugged, treeless hills, cut by narrow valleys and steep-walled canyons; traverses the fertile, un- dulating benchlands of the Walla Walla country and the sandy wastes along the Columbia River; crosses the river and then runs for miles through alfalfa and hop fields, orchards, vineyards, and truck farms, hemmed in by hills covered with sagebrush, dun-gray in the glare of noon, or softly purple as the sun sinks behind the Cascades. ”

“ Edfou is situated at a little distance inland on the western bank of the Nile. As usual, the land in the neighbourhood of the river is high in comparison with that which is beyond—that is to say, there is a continual descending slope to the edge of the desert, where at this time of year there is, as it were, a succession of large ponds, water-channels, and marshes. It is impossible to reach the desert except by a long, elevated, tortuous dike, which begins near the town and terminates near the foot of a spur of the Libyan chain, some three or four miles distant. ”

“ For the foreground, we have a dazzling slope of limestone débris; in the middle distance, a wide plain clothed with the delicious tender green of very young corn; farther away yet, the cupolas and minarets of Siût rising from the midst of a belt of palm-groves; beyond these again, the molten gold of the great river glittering away, coil after coil, into the far distance; and all along the horizon the everlasting boundary of the desert. Large pools of placid water left by the last inundation lie here and there, like lakes amid the green. A group of brown men are wading yonder with their nets. ”