Halys River

“ The complete record in the valley shows that, in the vicinity of the Holyoke Range, the lake came into existence about 18,000 years ago.
In each of the clay pits every set of lines exposed on the working faces represents a year, and the deposit as a whole is a calendar—in fact, it is also a thermograph for part of the region’s post-glacial history. Some bands at South Hadley Falls and along the Hadley river bank are highly distorted, and the distorted layers are planed off smooth. Spring sand covers the distorted beds. ”

“ That man is sifting all the soil on his land: he is looking for gold..." (Saint-Leu is sixty kilometers from Paris.)
For two days we are going to follow the valley where the river slowly coils its long bends through the wheat fields and the poplars. The low hills, covered with forests, lie in the distance and never come near enough to force the Oise to sudden detours. This river is not like the Marne, incessantly turned aside by the spur of a hill. It flows indolently under a pale horizon, in a vast landscape whose shades are infinitely delicate, and whose lines are infinitely soft. ”

“ The average width of this section between [Pg 45] the banks is one thousand feet. About one mile below its upper extremity is "Devil's Hole," a side-chasm cut out of the American bank of the river by a small stream called "Bloody Run," which, in heavy rains, forms a torrent. The "Hole" has been made by the detrition and washing out of the shale and the fall of the overlying rock. A short distance above, on the Canadian side, lies Foster's Glen, a singular and extensive lateral excavation left dry by the receding flood. ”

“ The two vessels headed off again and went on, rounding the point and running up the river. Haley, picking his course, with accuracy, gazed astern again and again, with an anxious eye. Presently he uttered an exclamation of anger. The schooner Folly had, indeed, put forth from its mooring and, with all sail spread, was taking a diagonal course across the river, following in the wake of the two poachers.
The shore of the river made a bend to the eastward, at this point, however, and the river broadened to the width of something like a mile and a half. ”

“ When the vallies are of considerable extent, they are almost invariably occupied by a lake, the proportion of water in this primitive district being very great; from the top of the highest hill on the Hill River, which has not a greater altitude than six hundred feet, thirty-six lakes are said to be visible. The small elevation of the chain may be inferred from an examination of the map, which shows that it is crossed by several rivers, that rise in the Rocky Mountains, the most considerable of which are the Churchill and the Saskatchewan, or Nelson River. ”

“ Lawrence. The shores of the stream are almost uninhabited. The hills rise from the water's edge, and if ever a narrow vale divides them, it is but to open drearier solitudes to the eye. In such a valley would stand a saw-mill, and huddled about it a few poor huts, while a friendless road, scarce discernible from the boat, wound up from the river through the valley, and led to wildernesses all the forlorner for the devastation of their forests. ”

“ There was not a sound except of the gushing stream; no cattle to be seen, nor any living creature.
* * * * * *
Our way continued through interchange of pastoral and forest ground. Crossed a bridge, and then had the stream to our left in a rocky gulf overhung with trees, chiefly beeches and elms; sawing-mills on the river very picturesque. It is impossible to imagine a more beautiful descent than was before us to the vale of Hasli. The roaring stream was our companion; sometimes we looked down upon it from the edge of a lofty precipice ”

“ Captain JOHN HAYES, of the Bombay marine, visited Storm Bay and D'Entrecasteaux's Channel, with the private ships Duke and Dutchess from India, in 1794. He went much further up the Rivière du Nord, than the boat from the French ships had done, and gave it the name of the DERWENT RIVER. This name is likely to efflace the first appellation, and with some degree of propriety; both from the superior extent of captain Hayes' examination, and from North River being an equivocal term for a stream at the south end of Van Diemen's Land. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It lacked the intensely blue atmosphere of the rival vale, and its heavy soils and scents; the new air was clear, bracing, ethereal. The river itself, which nourished the grass and cows of these renowned dairies, flowed not like the streams in Blackmoor. Those were slow, silent, often turbid; flowing over beds of mud into which the incautious wader might sink and vanish unawares. The Var waters were clear as the pure River of Life shown to the Evangelist, rapid as the shadow of a cloud, with pebbly shallows that prattled to the sky all day long. ”

“ Many of these again meeting in one common Valley and gaining the plain Ground, being grown united in one common Channel make such streams as the Rhine, the Rhone, the Danube, which latter one would hardly think the collection of Water condensed out of Vapour, unless we consider how vast a Tract of Ground that River drains, and that it is the sum of all those Springs which break out on the South side of the Carpathian Mountains, and on the North side of the immense Ridg of the Alps, which is one continued Chain of Mountains from Switzerland to the Black Sea. ”

“ A few miles above the Chicopee, on the Connecticut, are the Hadley Falls, the greatest water-power of New England, and the creator of Holyoke, with fifty thousand people, the chief manufactory of fine papers in the world. In a little more than a mile the river descends sixty feet in falls and rapids, and by a system of canals the water is led for three miles along the banks, thus serving the factories, which have great advantages of position, as the river winds around them on three sides, and its flow is also supplemented by steam-power. ”

“ I. From the mouth of Wood Creek to Jerusalem, Rocky River is a quiet stream wandering between low banks through flat meadows, which are generally swampy almost to the foot of the bordering hills.
Near Jerusalem bridge two small branches enter Rocky River. Immediately north of the bridge is a level swampy area about one-half mile in length. Where the valley closes in again, bedrock is exposed near the stream, and beginning at a point one-half mile below (north of) Jerusalem, Rocky River--a swift torrent choked by boulders of great size--deserves its name. ”

“ Nelson River is a much more noble stream than Hayes’ River, with respect to its navigation, extending about twenty miles from the sea; but from thenceforward it 197 becomes so full of obstructions, from portages, falls, and rapids, that the Company have been compelled to establish their factory upon, and give a decided preference to, Hayes’ River, although they have an establishment or two for trade on the former. The Nelson River takes its rise, according to McKenzie, in the Stony Mountains; and empties itself into Hudson’s Bay, at the same place as Hayes’ River. ”

“ The valley at first was nothing more than a shallow trench excavated in the drift which covers the surface of the country—such an one as may still be seen between Lake Erie and the falls—but the river, slowly and steadily, has cut its way back through the rocky plateau from the first site of the falls near Queenstown to their present position. The upper part of this plateau consists of a thick bed of hard limestone, but beneath this the deposits become softer; and the lowest bed is the most perishable. The water, as it plunges down, undermines the overlying rock. ”

“ The riverside scenery is interesting and beautiful in the lower as well as in the higher reaches, and the dome-palms [212] become more numerous as one advances northward and add to the charm of the banks. There was no other vegetation when we saw the country except low-grown mimosas and mimosa-scrub. Sand stretches away on either side from the course of the river, and we crossed few khors after leaving Goz Regeb, for the rainfall in this region is absorbed in the soil and is insufficient to produce torrents which would scour a course towards the stream. ”

“ Indians have been hauling rock all winter for the dam. The canal, when completed, will be ten or fifteen miles long and will irrigate about 5,000 acres of the Milk river valley lands south of the river. These lands will grow excellent crops of grain and hay.
“A new enterprise that will be commenced this summer (1899) is a big reservoir on Warm Springs creek in the Little Rockies. This reservoir will cover 160 acres of land and will have an average depth of eighteen feet. It is designed to furnish a supply of water for irrigating purposes in the southern part of the reservation. ”

“ There are no steam railways, but an electric line connects South Hadley and South Hadley Falls with the New York, New Haven & Hartford and the Boston & Maine railways at Holyoke. The village of South Hadley, or the Center, lies at the south base of Mount Holyoke, about 4 m. from Holyoke and about 3 m. from South Hadley Falls; it is the seat of Mount Holyoke College. South Hadley Falls are connected with Holyoke by a bridge across the Connecticut river. The falls of the river afford water-power for paper mills, cotton and woollen mills, and saw mills. ”

“ In mountainous districts landslips sometimes occur and block the valley of a stream which then forms a lake. The water gradually rises and eventually flows over the dam and sweeps it away causing a flood, which is of great suddenness and height but decreases very quickly in height as it travels down the valley. In a case which occurred in the Himalayas in 1888 the inhabitants of the valleys, from the dam to the point where the river debouches from the hills, were compelled by Government to vacate all habitations below the probable level of the flood, and no loss of life occurred. ”

“ At the same time the alluvial materials, building out to sea, thus diminish the slope of the stream. In the extreme old age of the river system the mountains are eaten down so that the torrent section disappears, and the stream becomes of something like a uniform slope; the higher alluvial plains gradually waste away, until in the end the valley has no salient features. At this stage in the process, or even before it is attained, the valley is likely to be submerged beneath the sea, where it is buried beneath the deposits formed on the floor ”

“ Waterfalls are not common in rivers flowing through lowlands; they indicate disturbances of normal stream development and sometimes change in course.
The Connecticut Lowland is old, but its ancient drainage lines were buried by the deposits left in glacial Lake Hadley. The river’s present course was established upon these lacustrine sediments, and the inner valley plain is excavated in them. Before entrenchment took place, the south-flowing reach of the river above Millers Falls was deflected westward across the lake plain by the delta of Millers River. ”

“ At a quarter of a league from the outlet, where we were, it grows narrower, and its channel is confined between two very high, steep, rocky banks, inducing the belief that the navigation would be very difficult quite up to the cataract. As to the river above the Falls, the current very often sucks into this gulf, from a great distance above, deer and stags, elk and roebucks, which, in attempting to swim the river, suffer themselves to be drawn so far down-stream that they are compelled to descend the Falls, and are overwhelmed in its frightful abyss. ”

“ To pass the drift, which is always difficult and dangerous except when the stream is exceptionally low, marks on the rocks have to be consulted. The road does not run direct across the river, but makes a wide bend; it descends to the river bed from the level of the surrounding veldt by a very steep and narrow cutting. There are huge boulders in the stream, hidden in its turbid waters, which render the crossing particularly awkward for waggons. ”

“ Homley Rapids, seven miles below Pasco ferry, are formed by a rough reef of bedrock running half way across the river from the right bank. Approached from the right side of the long gravel island that divides the river just above them, one might get badly tangled up before he got through; by the left-hand channel the going is easy if one keeps an eye on the shallowing water at the bars. ”

“ This is one of the most beautiful and most instructive examples of consequent drainage—that is, of streams whose direction has been determined by the inclination of the surface over which they flow—thus far discovered. Still another feature of much geographical interest is furnished by the rivers on the adjacent plain, two of which, branches of the Cheyenne River, cross the north and south extensions, respectively, of the Black Hills dome. ”