Aisne River

“ Along the Aisne the line of our Division stretched from Venizel to the bridge of Condé. You must not think of the river as running through a gorge or as meandering along the foot of slopes rising directly from the river bank. On the southern side lie the Heights of Champagne, practically a tableland. From the river this tableland looks like a series of ridges approaching the valley at an angle. Between the foothills and the river runs the Soissons-Rheims road, good pavé, and for the most part covered by trees. To the north there is a distance of two miles or so from the river to the hills. ”

“ At Mayenne, the river of that name divides the provinces. The whole of this country is singularly beautiful. I observed vast quantities of buck wheat, which the French call bled noir or sarazin. The country was very much enclosed, producing a great contrast to the vast tracts of land through which I had passed without a single division.
At two leagues from Mayenne we crossed the river Aisne, winding through a beautiful valley, between Martigné and Louverné. On the left the river forms a small lake, surrounded by a wood at the foot of a very long and steep hill. ”

“ Between the Aisne and the Meuse is the Ardennes Canal, and the Aisne and the Marne are united by a canal which passes Reims. The Marne has similar communication with the Meuse and the Rhine, the Yonne with the Saône (by the Burgundy Canal) and with the Loire by the Loing Canal dividing at Montargis into two branches—those of Orleans and Briare. ”

“ Above Janville a lateral canal continued by the Sambre-Oise canal accompanies the river to Landrecies. It communicates with the canal system of Flanders and with the Somme canal by way of the St Quentin canal (Crozat branch) which unites with it at Chauny. The same town is its point of junction with the Aisne-Oise canal, by which it is linked with the Eastern canal system. ”

“ Where the valley opens out there are villages and small towns. The largest place is the picturesque old city of Soissons.
Now the ridge north of the Aisne extends west to east for some thirty-four miles. At Craonne, its eastern end, it rises to a summit about 500 feet high, and then falls abruptly. There is here, going from the Aisne northwards, a fairly level open gap some three miles wide. South of the Aisne, the same gap extends for about ten miles to Rheims. On each side of the gap rise hillsides clothed with woods. At the crossing of the Aisne is situated the village of Berry-au-Bac. ”

“ After passing over this dreary track, you arrive at the edge of a steep declivity, which shelves down to the valley in which the Aisne wanders. The appearance of this valley is extremely beautiful. It is sheltered by high ridges, or sloping hills, covered with vineyards, orchards, and luxuriant woods: the little plain is studded with villas and neat cottages, embosomed in trees, or surrounded by green meadows, in which the winding course of the Aisne can at intervals be discerned. ”

“ I could identify only the peculiar uniform of the Senegalese and the light blue of the cavalry, as they moved past through breaks in the trees. Then the rain came down again, fiercely, and the scene lost colour in a grey drift of cloud and wind. Once so far up, and clear of the obstruction of bases, it was well to see all one could. Returning down the line of the Oise, and keeping in the woods, I got to the extreme west corner of the Forest of Laigue, where the Aisne joins the Oise. Most of the bridges have been blown up, and it is well not to approach those that exist, as things are. ”

“ In its course northward this lovely stream cuts through the charming hills about Asheville, and pours its crystal waters through a narrow gorge until it passes the blockade of the Smoky Mountains. In this space of forty miles it is indeed a “racing river,” which is signified by its Cherokee name of Tahkecostee. From a gentle stream above Asheville, it becomes an angry, raging flood below that point as it dashes through mountain gorges and over opposing boulders with a roar like thunder. ”

“ Down at the levee, the night-shifts were piling brush, dragging it to threatened points where the lapping waves broke over the levee; sacking sand, piling it in heaps. On the other side of the gorge, Rickard was blowing out the west channel to let the increasing flood waters through. Up the gorge, but below Fassett’s ranch now, following the retreating platoons of the river, Hardin was toiling, directing his men. He had refused to listen to Blinn. Sleep, with the river cutting back like that, hazarding the valley? Rest? ”

“ The army had thus twelve bridges connecting with the south bank, and was able to move across in force with a large part of his artillery.
Crossing the Aisne at Soissons, the main road running for about a mile and a half north-east to the little village of Crouy, there divides. On the right is a lower road eastward up the valley of the Aisne, past and under the bluffs on the north side to Berry-au-Bac. On the left is a road which climbs up hill, carried in some places through cuttings and tunnels, at others over short viaducts, until it reaches the summit of the ridge. ”

“ No one believed that the soft silt bottom of the river which cut out like salt would hold a pour of rock. Marshall, aided by Rickard, schemed to fight power with haste. Faster than the current could wash it down-stream, the crews would rain gravel and rock on to the treacherous river-bed. ”

“ The morning was gone when Innes turned from the Dowker tent. She was despondently comparing life to a vise, “that is, woman’s life!” How much easier to be a man, to fight the big fight, than the eternal wrestle with dirt and disorder! No, a woman’s life is a river, she changed her comparison whimsically, a shallow stream ending in a—sink! Small wonder that the sad asylums were full of women, women from the farms. Tom’s work would help that, the Hardins, the Estradas; she had heard Captain Brandon tell of the deliverance promised by the gospel of irrigation! ”

“ Everybody will be cross, and everybody will be working. Perspiring men are not inspiring men!”
As she left the tent beyond, Innes could hear the vibrant voice of Godfrey persuading Mrs. Hardin to stay there a few weeks longer. She could hear him say, “This will delay the turning of the river at the most but a few weeks. Rickard told me so a week ago. And think what it would be here without you!”
“They were all expecting it!” resisted Innes Hardin. She turned back toward the river. She must find Tom. ”

“ The affluents of the Seine below Paris are the Oise, its principal tributary, which has its birth in the distant Ardennes in Belgium; the Epte, a “pure water” stream which flows through a charming valley, from Forges-les-Eaux to Giverny near Vernon; the Andelle, less important, but a wonderfully picturesque little river, which joins the parent stream near Pont de l’Arche. ”

“ The river falls the more rapidly as we descend, and its tributaries leap to join it, the railroad scarce finding room between the rocks and the brawling current. The way is into a rugged and inhospitable gorge whose walls rise at last on either hand into mountains that culminate some thirty miles below Asheville. At Mountain Island the waters dash beautifully over a ledge of conglomerate and rush out from a long series of rapids into the deep water above Hot Springs. Beyond the limestone cove in which the springs occur, the valley, though narrow still, is wider and bottom lands appear. ”

“ Here at Compiègne the vigour of the Oise ends. Above it is a weakly, purling stream, the greater part of the traffic going by the Canal Lateral, while below it broadens out into a workable, industrial sort of a waterway which is doing its best to contribute its share to the prosperity of France.
We learn here, as elsewhere, where it has been attempted, that the hand of man cannot irretrievably make or reclaim the course of a river. Deprived of its natural bed and windings, it will always form new ones of its own making in conformity to the law of nature. ”

“ The upland declines a little, the valley broadens towards the sea, as the river changes into an estuary. Between the one and the other there is no very hard and fast division; the ground by the side of each is low, but as a rule by the river it is just high enough to be naturally fit for cultivation, while by the estuary it is a marsh. But as the ground becomes more salubrious, the channel becomes more shallow, and at one place, a short distance above the confluence of a tributary stream from the north—the Lea—this change in the character of the valley is a little more rapid than elsewhere. ”

“ All alike are deserted: the tide idly laps the piles of the rotting Bridge; it rolls along the empty wharves, bearing no{21} keel upon its bosom; there is no boat on the river, there is no smoke from any house; there is no life, no sign of life, in the place which had formerly been so crowded and so busy. The timbered face of the embankment gave way and crumbled into the river; the Causeway was eaten by the tides here and there; the low grounds once more became a marsh, and the wild birds returned, undisturbed, to their former haunts. ”

“ Each time a belching engine pulled across that hazardous track, it flung a credit to the man-side. Each time the waters, slowly rising, hurled their weight against the creaking trestles where the rock was thin, a point was gained by the militant river. Its roar sounded like the last cry of a wounded animal to Innes’ ear; the Dragon was a reality that night as it spent its rage against the shackles of puny men. ”

“ The Ouse, the next, going westward, to cut through the Downs, is a very much larger stream. It breaks through the here narrow but lofty chalk range some five miles from the sea at Lewes, and then winds through the meadows as a tidal river{214} to Newhaven—a stretch of country familiar enough to every one using this route to the Continent. The cleft in the Downs made by the Ouse below the ancient and picturesque town of Lewes is one of the boldest and most precipitous scenes of its kind in the whole chalk system. ”

“ Rickard moved from bank to raft; knee deep in water, screaming orders through the din; directing the gangs; speeding the rock trains; helping Wooster, who was driving large gangs of Mexicans and Indians. The river must not be allowed to creep around the bulwark, to catch them unawares; the work must not halt for an instant; the force of the thwarted river growing fiercer with each pour of rock. [385] Haste against strength, or the victory the river’s! Hardin oscillated between the levee and dams, taking orders, giving orders. ”

“ We had a few whiffs from brickfields and other ugly industries that scar the banks, but the windings of the Issel bore us swiftly to regions of grassy meadows, and waving reeds, threatening sometimes to lose us in strange no-thoroughfares of water more like separate lakes and round ponds, than the flowing reaches of a river. ”

“ For some ten miles above the long, white, furrowed face of Brine’s Rip, where Blue Forks Brook flows in, the main stream of the Ottanoonsis is a succession of mad rapids and toothed ledges and treacherous, channel-splitting shoals. These ten miles are a trial of nerve and water-craft for the best canoeists on the river. In the spring, when the river was in freshet and the freed logs were racing, battering, and jamming, the whole reach was such a death-trap for the stream-drivers that 14 it had come to be known as Dead Man’s Run. ”

“ Never a man left his camp in the morning who did not look toward that span crawling across the treacherous stream, [299] measure that widened by-pass. Would the gate stand? Would pilings driven through brush mats into a bed of silt, a bottomless pit, hold against that river, should it turn and lash its great tail? The Hardin men halloed for the gate, but looked each morning to see if it were still there. The Reclamation Service men and the engineers of the railroad were openly skeptical ”

“ We are all needed here. Mexicali’s going. I’ll be lucky if I get sent back to-night.”
“It’s going down the Wistaria?”
“Enough to scare her. The ranch’s as good as gone already. What good’s the land if we can’t get water up to it?”
“I know,” murmured Innes.
“I’m not blaming any one, Miss Hardin. Unless it’s myself. I ought never to have brought her here. Not until the river’s settled. The wind’s the worst to her; she’s that scared of the wind.” ”

“ The River Ashe, after a drowsy and meandering childhood, passed peacefully among the sedges and marigolds of its water meadows, suddenly and somewhat disconcertingly grows up and, without any period of transition and adolescence, becomes, from being a mere girl of a rivulet, a male and full-blooded estuary of the sea. ”

“ An ice dam lake was also formed a little later, when an ice wall blocked the northern part of the Black River Valley just west of the Adirondack Mountains and caused a lake covering about 200 square miles. One of the largest of all known ice dam lakes has been called Lake Agassiz, which attained a maximum length of over 700 miles and a width of 250 miles in the Red River of the North region of eastern North Dakota, western and northwestern Minnesota, and northward into Canada, most of its area having been in Canada. ”

“ The wind, though still blowing through the car and ruffling the train dust, was carrying less of grit and sand. To the nostrils of Rickard and his new acquaintance, it brought the pleasing suggestion of grassy meadows, of willow-lined streams and fragrant fields.
“It is the accepted idea that this valley is attracting a superior class of men because of its temperance stand. It is the other way round. The valley stood for temperance because of the sort of men who had settled here, the men of the irrigation type.”
The engineer’s ear criticized “irrigation type.” ”