Grand River

“ The roar of the water, the foaming curtain of the descending torrent and the spray that floats some distance down—all combine to make a striking scene; while the sight of the river rolling away in the shuddering depths below has a strong fascination for all. Above the Grand Falls there are picturesque rapids where by walking over the great rocks—and over giant tree trunks that have lodged in immovable positions in their descent of the river from the lumbering region higher up—a good view of river and hilly banks may be obtained. ”

“ We turned our horses loose, and let them feed on the prairie.
The Prophet and Party Reach Tower Hill.
Saturday, 19.—This morning we struck our tents and formed a line of march, crossing Grand River at the mouth of Honey Creek and Nelson's Ferry. Grand River is a large, beautiful, deep and rapid stream, during the high waters of Spring, and will undoubtedly admit of navigation by steamboat and other water craft. At the mouth of Honey Creek is a good landing. We pursued our course up the river, {35} mostly through timber, for about eighteen miles, when we arrived at Colonel Lyman Wight's home. ”

“ At daylight, on the 30th, our cavalcade was moving across the woody ridges and verdant valleys between the crossings of {271} Grand River and its great north fork. [144] We struck that stream about ten o'clock. Its water was beautifully clear, average depth two feet, and current four miles the hour. It is said to take its rise in the mountains, near the south side of the 'Great Gap,' and to flow, in a south-westerly course, through a country of broken and barren plains, into Grand River, twenty miles below the crossings. We ascended rapidly all the day. There was no trail to guide us ”

“ The district of country thus granted, is said to be alike beautiful and fertile. The Grand River rises in the interior of the country toward Lake Huron, and winds its way to Lake Erie through a long and picturesque course. It is navigable for small vessels many miles upward, and for large boats a much greater distance still. The land along its whole course is uncommonly productive.
[FN-1] Copy of the Grant, among the Brant papers. ”

“ The west half of it is undulating, and consists principally of burr and white oak openings, interspersed occasionally with prairies. It abounds in springs and possesses a fertile soil. The northeast part is heavily timbered and somewhat intersected with marshes and small lakes. The soil, however, of this part, is rich and well adapted for meadow. Grand river is an excellent stream of pure water, quick, yet navigable for canoes from its junction with its south branch, quite through the county and to lake Michigan. ”

“ There are between eight and nine hundred of these people living along Grand river and its tributaries, but many of their most populous villages are on land now belonging to the United States.
This river is the largest stream that waters the west part of the peninsula of Michigan, being two hundred and seventy miles in length, its windings included, and navigable two hundred and forty miles for batteaux; receiving in its course a great number of tributary streams, among which are Portage, Red Cedar, Looking Glass, Soft Maple, Muscota, Flat, Rouge and Thorn Apple rivers. ”

“ We had now ascended about eighty miles from the mouth of Grand river. The country we had passed is fertile, and presents such an intermixture of forests and grassy plains, as is extremely pleasing to the eye. Towards the north the hills became gradually more and more elevated. The discontinuance of the horizontal limestone, the disclosure in the deep vallies of the more ancient varieties of sandstone, and the frequent occurrence in the soil of small round masses of granite, gneiss, and other primitive rocks, indicate an approach towards the margin of the secondary basin. ”

“ Never has the earth seemed so lovely nor the sun so bright as to-day. Never has the Great River been so calm nor so free from rocks. Your magic canoes have removed all obstacles as they came. Never has our tobacco tasted so fine nor our corn looked so thriving. Come and dwell with us that we may know your Manitou!"
To honor the guests a busy preparation for a grand feast was going forward in the center of the town. There was to be smoking of the peace pipes. Most splendid of all, a dance of the calumet was soon to begin.
Warriors strutted in the front rows of the crowd. ”

“ At the Grand Rapids the river expands to about 3⁄4 of a mile in width, its general width not being more than 3⁄5 of a mile, and tumbles over an unequal bed of rocks for about two miles, through which there cannot be said to be any channel ”

“ The Tenor turned hastily. But there was nothing wrong. It was only that they had reached a point from which they could obtain a view that pleased the Boy's excitable fancy; a bend of the river, a glimpse of upland meadows, woods with the cathedral spire above them, and the square outline of the castle overhanging the city from its dominant site on the hill, and seeming to guard it as it slept.
The Tenor looked a little, then dipped his oars and rowed a stroke or two. The Boy's mood had changed. He was keenly susceptible to the refining influences of beautiful scenes. ”

“ How like a mind is to a river! both may be pure and transparent and lovable, and strong to support and admirable; each may mirror the beauties of earth and sky, and still have a wonderful beauty of its own to delight us; both are always moving onward, bound irresistibly to be absorbed in a great ocean mystery, to be swept away irreclaimably, without hope of return, but leaving memories of themselves in good or evil wrought by them; and both are pure at the outset, but can be contaminated, when they in turn contaminate ”

“ At this time Ideala's own life was not unlike one of these hapless straws, and it seemed a wretched failure of its early promise, that ending as a straw on the common stream, when so little might have made her influence in her own sphere like the river itself, strong and beautiful. ”

“ The visible houses, few of them inviting in appearance, are miles apart. As had been foretold at the village, the outlook for lodgings 106 in this dismal region is not at all encouraging. It was well that we had stopped at Grand Detour.
Below the bend, where the country is more open, though the banks are still deep-cut, the highway to Dixon skirts the river, and for several miles we kept company with the stage. ”

“ There are now neither shrubs nor flowers by the river, but here and there a weeping willow overhangs the water. As [Pg 344] we pass beneath one of the arches we obtain on the one side a clearer view of the Trinity meadows; on the other, of Wren’s stately but rather ugly library adjoining the “New Court,” and in front, across more meadows, and yet more aged trees, we see the grand mass of the “New Court” of St. John’s College.
JUNCTION OF THE CAM AND THE OUSE.
On approaching these the river bends to the right. ”

“ THE Grand Canyon is a gorge 217 miles in length, through which flows a great river with many storm-born tributaries. ”

“ Things surprise us just as much as we expect them to. When we went up the river to Canton and saw the Pagoda, we all exclaimed, 'Why, it is just like the pictures—river, and junks, and all!' If we had not seen the pictures I believe we should scarcely have noticed it, and certainly we should not have been surprised at all. ”

“ The scene becomes peculiarly desolate and mournful, often giving one the impression of being far removed from civilization, threading the course of some hitherto unexplored stream. Penetrate the deep fringe of forest and morass on foot, however, and smiling prairies are found beyond, stretching to the horizon and cut up into prosperous farms. The river is here from a half to three-quarters of a mile broad, but the shallows and snags are as numerous as ever and navigation is continually attended with some danger of being either grounded or capsized. ”

“ As they ripple by the town the waters sing a pretty song; but a stone’s-throw or two above the comely old bridge which spans them close to where the castle frowned upon all who sought to cross it with hostile intent, it glides smooth and silent, as though it had fallen asleep. Now the valley narrows into a glen, winding and profound; and at Neidpath, in full view of the town, the river dwindles into the merest burn, which it would be no great feat to leap across. But what a burn, and what a glen! Nothing yet seen, or still to be seen, is quite so superb as what now meets the view. ”

“ Mountains come down to meet the Great River. The mists of the night lift slowly away, and we are brought suddenly into the presence-chamber. One by one they stand out in all their rugged might, only softened here and there by fleecy clouds still clinging to their sides, and shining pink in the ruddy dawn. Bold bluffs that have come hundreds of miles from their inland home guard the river. They rise on both sides, fronting us, bare and black, layer of solid rock piled on solid rock, defiant fortifications of some giant race, crowned here and there with frowning tower ”

“ Two or three hundred yards has been the limit of the view ahead, as the stream swerves gracefully from the slightest rise of land, and flows now east, now north, now east, now south again. So long a stretch of navigable water is not common on the Delectable River, and we make the most of it, moving leisurely, and prisoning the everchanging picture with the imperfect camera of the eyes. ”

“ Beyond all these comes a wilder and barer district, where the hills draw closer to the river, and cultivation and population become more rare, and where at length, over the massive and rounded outlines of the fells, as we rise towards the great “dorsal ridge” of England, we catch glimpses of the Cumberland Mountains and of the Cheviots.
To trace the Wear upwards or downwards is like ascending or descending the stream of English history; from the busy present we move back into the feudal age, and at length into the quietude of primitive Nature. ”

“ Did he then realize the length and great turnings of the mighty waterway whose first white companion he was from its fountain-head to its confluence with the ocean? If you read the history of the River and company with it by sun and stars for scarcely one hundred miles, you have strange feelings not unmingled with wonder and melancholy, when you come to its source. Dwellers in the Happy Valley strike their roots deep and love their River and Mountains as they love the flag. ”

“ The river itself had many of the elements of nobility and beauty as, taking its rise in the snowy heights of the New England ranges, it clove its way eastward, finally debouching into the blue waters of the Pacific. The river-flats formed magnificent stretches of arable lands; too rich, indeed, for such cereals as wheat and oats, for their rank growth rendered them liable to the fatal rust. ”

“ Throughout this portion of the Nile Valley the river scenery presents a series of beautiful pictures. The mountains bar the stream on the west, rising almost vertically, with scarred and scarped faces, like a Titanic wall. To the east low, wooded hills run parallel to the river—at times, little more than stony ridges, but occasionally rising some hundred feet above the water. ”

“ Rock River scenery combines the rustic, the romantic, and the picturesque,—prairies, meadows, ravines, swamps, mountainous bluffs, eroded palisades, wide stretches of densely wooded bottoms, heavy upland forests, 20 shallows, spits, and rapids. Birds and flowers, and uncommon plants and vines, delight the naturalist and the botanist. The many thriving manufacturing cities,—such as Stoughton, Janesville, Beloit, Rockford, Rockton, Dixon, Sterling, and Oregon,—furnish an abundance of sight-seeing. ”

“ The railway, after crossing a mile or two of meadows, hugs the river all the way. The scenery is the reverse of bold. The hills are low, monotonous in form, and the stream winds through them, with many a pretty turn and “reach,” with scarcely a ribbon of room to spare on either side. The river is shallow, rapid, stony, muddy, full of rocks, with an occasional little island covered with low bushes. The rock seems to be a clay formation, rotten and colored. ”

“ On the Atlantic seaboard English towns were rooting themselves through settlers who owned and cultivated their homesteads and meant to keep them forever. Along the Pacific coast Spanish priests drilling the heathen into civilized farmers owned the gardens where the adobe missions were building, and stood ready to defend them. In the Mississippi Valley between the two the little Rock of the Illinois, a pinpoint on the map, a speck on the horizon, by the right of its twenty armed Frenchmen held the whole vast region of the Great River for France. ”

“ This river rises on the Black Mountain, is a charming tributary of the French Broad, from five to twenty yards in width, cold and clear, very rapid, and throughout its entire length is overshaded by a most luxuriant growth of graceful and sweet-scented trees and vines. The plantations on this stream are highly cultivated, the surrounding scenery is mountainous, graceful, and picturesque, and among the small but numerous waterfalls which make the first half of its course exceedingly romantic, may be enjoyed the finest of trout fishing. ”

“ The shores are cultivated to the water’s edge, and lean up in graceful, rather than bold elevations; the eminences around are crested with the villas of the wealthy inhabitants of the metropolis at the river’s mouth; summer-houses, belvideres, and water-steps, give an air of enjoyment and refreshment to the banks, and, without any thing like the degree of the picturesque which makes the river so remarkable thirty or forty miles below, it is, perhaps, a more tempting character of scenery to build and live among. ”