Feather River

“ In the north, on the edge of the tableland, they are most numerous. On the east coast, at the head of the Burdekin River, there are unmistakeable signs of an upward effort of the imprisoned waters to free themselves. One main tributary, a creek called Fletcher's Creek, takes its rise in a labyrinth of basaltic rocks, that for years defied the efforts of the whites to penetrate. ”

“ The, in this respect, utterly guileless Cathedral town of Hereford is, indeed, the only place above the scale of a small market-town within touch of its banks. Everywhere, even between the rapids, the river itself is instinct with the sense of buoyancy. After leaving the Black Mountains above Hereford it becomes at intervals for pleasure-boats a navigable stream; but till it leaves Wales it has all the boil and rush and stir of a salmon river. It is easy to pick out those sections of the Wye, charming as they are in a quiet, pastoral, Severn-like fashion, which are the least distinguished. ”

“ That Congress did not act arbitrarily in determining that 'for the purposes of navigation of said waters and the waters connected therewith,' the whole flow of the stream should be devoted exclusively to that end, is most evident when we consider the character of this stream and its relation to the whole problem of lake navigation. The river St. Marys is the only outlet for the waters of Lake Superior. The stretch of water called the falls and rapids of the river is about 3,000 feet long, and from bank to bank has a width of about 4,000 feet. ”

“ Between the river and the distant Salmon river range, the plain is represented by Mr. Fitzpatrick as so entirely broken up and rent into chasms as to be impracticable for a man even on foot. In the sketch annexed, the point of view is low, but it conveys very well some idea of the open character of the country, with the buttes rising out above the general line. By measurement, the river above is 870 feet wide, immediately contracted at the fall in the form of a lock, by jutting piles of scoriaceous basalt, over which the foaming river must present a grand appearance at the time of high water. ”

“ From the northern end of Newcastle Waters a fresh departure was as made, and the watercourse that supplies these lagoons followed up for some fifty miles. From there an easterly course was kept, and after some privation from want of water, reached a creek, which was christened Relief Creek, and which proved to be one of the head waters of the Macarthur. A large extent of valuable pastoral country was found in the basin drained by this river, and many fine permanent springs discovered. ”

“ From a high ridge which falls away abruptly into a water-hewn declivity, we look through broad, open vistas far below at the North Fork of the Flathead River. The stream takes its way between banks of fine gray pebbles, parting now over a sandy bar in slender green ribbons, then uniting in one broad current, again separating to curl in white foam-frills around a boulder or303 little island. Mild and limpid as the river now appears there is evidence of its flood-tide fury in uprooted trees and livid scars along its banks. ”

“ There was no chief with the smaller company, and Red Feather told them that, since there was no chance of finding any settlers in the neighborhood, they would ride back to their own villages, which lay to the south-east.
The start was made, and the horsemen passed fully a mile in grim silence. At the end of the mile he ordered them to keep the course they were following, while he alone turned to the right in quest of Tall Bear and his band of Muddy Creek Sioux. ”

“ Opposite the river mouth the reef is broken by a pass, through which the steady lines of combers sweep in to crash and tumble on the bar. Morning and afternoon the breakers are alive with naked children, shouting and glistening brown in the sunlight as they ride the waves.
Inland, the valley marking the river's course is lost in a maze of broken and fantastic peaks; seaward, bordering the green and blue of the lagoon, the snowy line of the reef stretches off endlessly ”

“ As they traveled north the steep high banks gradually flattened down, and the current of the river slackened. Finally the high banks disappeared altogether; they could see nothing over the tops of the poplars and pines that lined the water’s edge. The course of the stream became very tortuous, and progress was slow.
“We’re evidently coming to something,” Conacher remarked. “This country is a vast belt of silt deposited by the river as the result of some obstruction ahead.” ”

“ Because of this spreading habit of the stream, the few villages along the way are planted on the higher land at the base of the bluffs, or on an occasional sandy pocket-plateau 245 which the river, as in ages past it has worn its bed to lower levels, has left high and dry above present overflows. Some of these towns, in their fear of floods, are situated two or three miles back from the water highway; others, where the channel chances to closely hug a line of bluffs, are directly abutting the river, which is crossed at such points by either a ferry or a toll-bridge. ”

“ Elk were running in bands over the prairie and in the skirt of the timber. We reached the river at the mouth of a large slough, which we were unable to ford, and made a circuit of several miles around. Here the country appears very flat; oak-trees have entirely disappeared, and are replaced by a large willow, nearly equal to it in size. The river is about a hundred yards in breadth, branching into sloughs, and interspersed with islands. At this time it appears sufficiently deep for a small steamer, but its navigation would be broken by shallows at low water. ”

“ Thence the vast stream sweeps boldly into the south, and with a rush discharges down the rapids, and straight over the line of precipice, in a vast tumultuous greyish-drab torrent which speedily emerges into comparatively still water below. The rock here is an exceedingly hard, mottled limestone, resembling the stone at St. Andrew's Rapids on Red River. Where exposed it is pitted or bitten into by the endless action of wind and water, and lies in thick layers, forming an irregular dyke all along the shore, over the surface of which passes the portage, some forty yards in length. ”

“ The causeway which might therefore be necessary to approach the stream from the south in all states of the tide need only have been such a hardening of the track over the mud as is necessary between the high- and low-water mark of any tidal river where a ferry is to be established, and we must believe that the river at high water washed the gravel spit. ”

“ I declared to the open marshes, as I set foot out upon the raised way which led over to the Habitants Ferry.
The ferry-boat which crosses the deep and turbid tide of the Habitants is a clumsy scow propelled by a single oar thrust out from the stern. The river is hardly passable save for an hour on either side of full flood. The rest of the time it is a shrinking yet ever-turbulent stream which roars along between precipitous banks of red engulfing slime. ”

“ During the inundation season a ferry is necessary, and when transit is certain the owner sometimes nets $500 a week, which is not unfrequently squandered in a day. The banks are in places thirty feet high, and the bottom may average three miles from side to side. It is a swift-flowing stream, running as if it had no time to lose, and truly it has a long way to go. Its length, volume, and direction entitle it to the honor of being called the head water of the great Rio Colorado, or Colored River, a larger and more important stream than even the Columbia. ”

“ From these data it would appear probable that the rocks are a prolongation of the western slope of the great range called by Mr. Featherstonhaugh, in his report as United States geologist, the Atlantic ridge. This formation, which is but a few miles in width where it crosses the Hudson, appears gradually to widen as it proceeds to the north, and was on the St. Lawrence found to prevail both at the river Du Loup and at Grand Metis, dipping in the two places in opposite directions and covered in the interval by the thick diluvial deposits which form the valley of the Trois Pistoles. ”

“ The natives say there is a deeper channel to be found by keeping close in to the northern shore, but it has not yet been completely surveyed. A fresh breeze was blowing, which curled the waves and dashed them in breakers on the sandbank; so that our passage was made in a sea of foam. This obstruction renders the river comparatively useless, and is greatly to be regretted, as immediately the bar is passed the water deepens to four and five fathoms; occasionally we found no bottom with a ten-fathom line. ”

“ The general course of the river during the day was very little to the south of east, its banks still maintaining the same rocky and precipitous character, marks of inundation being frequently observed at the height of thirty feet above the present stream, which now was only running gently in a channel not more than thirty yards wide, but when in flood occupying the whole of the valley, which averages a quarter of a mile in width. The larger pools are lined with flags and reeds, and contain numbers of small fish resembling trout, similar to those found in the Lyons and Gascoyne Rivers. ”

“ Even overnight, even in a few short hours, a stream has been known to swell from sudden rains or snow, bringing the water with a rush down steep mountain sides and carrying with it the logs that were left strewn on the slopes or near the bank. Men work with feverish haste to roll the logs into the stream. The whole is swept into the dam, the trigger is released at the right moment and the rush of water with its freight of logs sweeps through the open gate with a mighty roar, carrying its cargo for miles on down to the river. ”

“ There are rapids, almost continually, from a mile above Prophetstown to Erie, ten miles below. The river bed here has a sharper descent than customary, and is thickly strewn with bowlders; many of them were visible above the surface, at the low stage of water which we found, but for the greater part they were covered for two or three inches. What with these impediments, the snags that had been left as the legacy of last spring's flood, and the frequent sand-banks and gravel-spits, 120 navigation was attended by many difficulties and some dangers. ”

“ The waters of these baby fountains are swollen by contributions from the streams, ponds, and lakes of the Adirondack wilderness, until along the banks of Fishing Brook, a tributary of the Hudson, the water is utilized at the first saw-mill. A few miles lower down the forests are vexed by the axe of the lumbermen, and logs are floated down the river one hundred miles to Glens Falls, where the State Dam and Great Boom are located. Half a million logs have been gathered there in a single spring. ”

“ The Nile never flows over the top of the dam, but always through the gates and the canal at one side. When the gates are closed during the dry season, enough water is held back by this structure of steel and granite to form a [133] lake over one hundred miles long, and this is let out as needed to supplement the ordinary flow of the river and give the crops plenty of water all summer through. There is water enough in the reservoir to give all the families of the United States all they could use for four or five months, and enough to supply Great Britain and Ireland the entire year. ”

“ Every stream has its own water-shed system, and this system is the real boundary of its basin. If we trace this [148] basin to its very limits on the highlands, we may find, not a mile away, the beginnings of another river, which shall flow in just the contrary direction, as for example in the case of the Rhine and Rhone, the Volga and the Dwina. The sources of the Missouri and of the Columbia lie close together, not a quarter of an hour’s walk apart; yet the waters of one flow into the Atlantic, of the other into the Pacific, and their mouths are almost 2500 miles apart. ”

“ In Pleistocene times drainage down the Nile Valley appears to have become definitely established and probably the river in the lower part of its course eventually washed up against and broke down the separating barrier of gravel between the Fayûm and the Nile Valley, so that part of its waters obtained access to the depression, formed a lake on the lowest part, and gradually rose until the whole basin, up to the level of the channel connecting it with the Nile Valley, became filled. ”

“ They are as vital to our commerce and industry as any matter now dealt with by the State, affecting our material well-being, and they are every year increasing in extent and importance. As regards the principal rivers—the Mersey, the Tyne, the Tees, the Clyde, and the Wear especially—they are now controlled in accordance with the recommendation made by the Duke of Richmond’s Select Committee, that “each catchment area should be placed under a single body of conservators, who should be responsible for maintaining the river, from its source to its outfall, in an efficient state.” ”

“ If the weir is lengthened, not by being built obliquely but by a widening of the stream at the site, the crest has to be raised and nothing is gained.
The only arrangement by which a weir can be made to hold up water when a stream is low and to let floods pass freely, consists in having part of the weir movable, i.e. consisting of gates, shutters or horizontal or vertical timbers, which can be withdrawn to let floods pass, and can be manipulated to any extent so as to regulate the amount of water passing. ”