Humber River

“ My house stood on a gravel ridge which stretches from the Carlton station of the Northern Railway to the River Humber, and which must have formed the beach of the antediluvian northern ocean, one hundred and eighty feet above the present lake, and four hundred and thirty above the sea. This gravel ridge plainly marks the Toronto Harbour at the mouth of the Humber, as it existed in those ancient days, before the Niagara River and the Falls had any place on our world's surface. ”

“ Fish recurs regularly every Friday. Evening comes, the roads are dark; the way is lost, they take a guide, to whom they give a penny: “In famulo ducenti nos de nocte, 1d.” On crossing the Humber they pay eightpence, which may appear much, compared with the other prices; but we must remember that the river was wide and difficult to cross, especially in winter. The annals of the Abbey of Meaux frequently tell of the ravages caused by the river’s overflow, of farms and mills destroyed, of entire domains submerged, and of crops swept away. ”

“ When united with other streams near its mouth, it is called the Humber, which discharges itself into the German ocean.
The Severn rises from North Wales, and, running for the most part south, falls into the Irish sea. On this river stand the two cities of Worcester and Gloucester. ”

“ Six miles due east across the [266] river Humber is the revolving light of the Spurn Head lighthouse, plainly seen from the hill above Alford, thirty miles away. Between the Louth and Grimsby main road and the sea another road runs south from Clee by Humberstone and Tetney, thence to Covenham and Alvingham and so to Louth. Humberstone is a parish which goes with Holton-le-Clay, though they are about three miles apart. It is remarkable for its fine avenues of trees, and has a good Perpendicular tower. ”

“ The dreary, lifeless monotony is relieved, however, just before reaching Humboldt Lake, by the bold but rugged contour of sky-piercing pinnacles, which rise to the south of the road in curious forms and extraordinary magnitude, marking the line of Humboldt River. These interesting formations are known as the Humboldt Palisades, in which the Devil’s Peak is conspicuous, viewed from the car window. After so many hours passed in crossing a wretched desert, the scenery of meandering river and lofty bluffs is extremely invigorating, and preparation to enjoy the sight is complete. ”

“ Most of our streams stay at home. Rather than run away to be tossed about and lost in the sea, they go down into the ground or up into the air.
HUMBOLDT RIVER.
The Humboldt River rises in the northwestern corner of Utah, passes into the northeastern corner of Nevada, in Elko County, and thence through Eureka, Lander, and Humboldt Counties, to its terminus in its lake and sink, just across the line in Churchill County. 18 The total length of the river is nearly 350 miles, while its width is only about thirty or forty feet, and its average depth less than eighteen inches. ”

“ This somewhat tortuous and difficult tidal way takes one into the heart of Hampshire’s most lovely creek. Need’s Oar Point is well named, as many have found after getting on the delusive mud of Beaulieu Spit, and one is lucky, if the tide is making out, to get so far before the ebb becomes too strong. With the flood, which will not keep one waiting more than three or four hours, and a favouring breeze one can soon run up as far as the bend of the river just below Buckler’s Hard, where there are moorings, snug enough so long as no craft comes drifting down with the stream. ”

“ Crossed a sand ridge about two miles, and travelled down the bottom about four miles, where we found some grass and camped. Our horses are failing fast. Kit Carson says truly that the Humboldt is the burying ground for horses and oxen. We pass daily great numbers of dead stock at the camping grounds, in the sloughs, and in the river. The river is nothing but horse broth, seasoned with alkali & salt. The appearance of emigrants has sadly changed since we started. ”

“ The valley of the Humboldt river to this point is from twelve to fifteen miles wide, and much of it covered with excellent grass; and the sides of the mountains, for considerable distance from their bases, are covered with a fine growth of bunch grass. The road crosses a great number of small streams of the purest water, which come from the snow-capped mountains and which run into the Humboldt river. ”

“ The Sink of the Humboldt is a lake of strong, brackish water, where the river empties into the natural basin, formed by the slant of the surrounding district of mountains, plain and desert, and where some of the water sinks into the ground and much of it evaporates, there being no surface outlet. ”

“ It will probably eventually become extinct, or survive as a mud marsh. In the spring, when the snow is melting about the head-waters of the river, Humboldt Lake has a length of about fifteen miles and a width of nine or ten miles. In summer and toward fall it becomes much smaller. At the south end of this lake is an outlet into a sink, or shallow lake, twenty-five or thirty miles long by about fifteen wide. This sink at times of high water 19 connects with a similar sink formed by the overflow from Carson Lake, the terminal basin of the Carson River. ”

“ Where no such barrier exists, the waves in a winter storm sweep all the sand clean off, and lay bare the clay, and tumbling upon it with mighty shocks, sometimes wear it down a foot in the course of a tide. By this lowering of the base, the saturated soil above, deprived of support, topples over, leaving a huge gap, which only facilitates further encroachments; and in the course of a few tides the fallen mass is drifted away to enlarge the shoals in the estuary of the Humber. ”

“ The road climbs the higher levels of a spreading plateau. Here above the steppes that in spring and fall are frequented by migrating caribou, "the Topsails" spring upward with strange and telling effect. Snow often rests on these pyramidal buttes until the summer is well advanced. The rough-fashioned landscape has its own charm, but from the railway few mellow scenes appear until the Humber is approached. On the way is Grand Lake, the largest of the myriad fresh-water seas that strew the island. ”

“ In the forenoon we traveled over a barren plain, ten miles in extent, when we found a spring. Traveled seven miles in the afternoon and intersected a tributary of Mary’s River, or Humboldt River, and camped.
Sunday, September 2.
We did not move our camp today. Grass good. All in good health.
Monday, September 3.
Traveled down the Humboldt valley 11 miles in the forenoon and dined on the river, which at this point is a small stream of clear water.
The valley is broad with a fertile soil which produces a good quality of grass. At this time it is parched with drouth. ”

“ North of the Humboldt Valley an area of about 5000 sq. m. is drained by the Owyhee, the Little Owyhee, the Salmon and Bruneau rivers, whose waters eventually reach the Pacific Ocean. Below this region flow the streams of the Great Basin, none of which reach the sea, but either terminate in lakes having no outlet or else vanish in sloughs or “sinks.” Small streams often sink from sight in their beds of gravel, and after flowing some distance underground, reappear farther on. Of the basin streams the Humboldt is the most important. ”

“ Hume's guidance, moving over ground wholly subject to flood, and extensively covered with reeds; the great body of the marsh lying upon our left. After passing the angle of a wood, upon our right, from which Mount Foster was distant about fourteen miles, we got upon a small plain, on which there was a new species of tortuous box. This plain was clear of reeds, and the soil upon it was very rich. Crossing in a westerly direction we arrived at the channel found by Mr. Hume, who must naturally have concluded that it was a continuation of the river. ”

“ Back to Ogden; two more nights and days, one long day crossing the Humboldt desert, rendered passable only by the Humboldt River, which, though the ragged mountains all run north and south, yet runs from east to west and marks its course by a narrow line of greenness, and at dusk we saw its end in the Humboldt sink, a lagoon without outlet on the western verge of the basin, against the Sierra, the arid side of which we were ascending all night, to awake among pine forests at sunrise ”

“ The Murrumbidgee was found to be in high flood, and threatened an effectual bar to further progress. But difficulty aroused this explorer to Herculean effort. Being supplied with a provision-cart, Hume took off the wheels, and, with the help of a tarpaulin, improvised it into a rough-and-ready punt, which, assisted by one of the men, he dragged across the swollen river. Another day's march brought them to the Narrengullen Meadows, where the party encamped for two nights. Again proceeding southward, the Tumut River was discovered, and crossed without difficulty. ”

“ Humboldt, who measured it at San Fernando in the month of May, when it had receded to its lowest ebb, found it to be two hundred and thirty-six toises broad; higher up it is considerably wider, gradually diminishing as it approaches its great confluent. Alluding to this singular phenomenon, mostly caused by evaporation and infiltrations through the dry, sandy banks of the river, the same eminent traveller elucidates some curious facts worthy of notice. ”

“ To the southward of this, bordering the base of the Sierra Nevada, within the Basin, is a long range of lakes; while many copious rivers disperse their water throughout its ungenial expanse. The chief of these streams is Humboldt River, which rises in the mountains west of the Great Salt Lake, and runs westwardly along the northern side of the Basin towards the Sierra Nevada of California. It courses onward for three hundred miles, without affluents, through a sterile plain, though the valley of its own creation is richly covered with grasses and bordered with willows and cottonwood. ”

“ In a region of red clay and sand, where all the streams have nearly the colour of arterial [Pg 80] blood, it is not surprising that several rivers should have received the same name; nor is it surprising that so accurate a topographer as the Baron Humboldt, having learned that a Red river rises forty or fifty miles east of Santa Fé, and runs to the east, should conjecture it might be the source of the Red river of Natchitoches. ”

“ Hume, the companion of my journey down the Macquarie, in 1828. They take their name from the little river that flows along their north and north-west boundaries. They are surrounded on every side by forests, and excepting to the W.N.W., as a central point, by hill. Undulating, but naked themselves, they have the appearance of open downs, and are most admirably adapted for sheep-walks, not only in point of vegetation, but also, because their inequalities prevent their becoming swampy during the rainy season. ”

“ He first looked into the open side of the buildings; but nothing did he see only sundry stockfish hanging up in rows by the tails, together with a heap of coals in one corner, and two large bales or packages covered with canvass in another. He then looked over the Humber, where the sun was struggling with some misty clouds, gilding the sky, and glittering on the calm, unruffled waters. ”

“ Stukely, who crossed the estuary during one of his itineraries, remarks: “Well may the Humber take its name from the noise it makes. My landlord, who is a sailor, says in a high wind ’tis incredibly great and terrible, like the crash and dashing together of ships.” The learned antiquary alludes probably to the bore, or ager as it is called, which rushes up the stream with so loud a hum that the popular mind seeks no other derivation for Humber. Professor Phillips, in his admirable book on Yorkshire, cites the Gaelic word Comar, a confluence of two or more waters, as the origin ”

“ In seasons when the water is low in the Humboldt River, there is much less danger of the alkali, as the running water in the river then comes from pure mountain springs, and is confined to the channel ”

“ The deepest and widest channel is that occupied by glacial deposits; an intermediate channel (shown in black) is occupied by silt and submerged forests; and a shallower channel is occupied by the present Humber and its alluvium. One interesting point, however, this section does not happen to illustrate. Somewhat lower down the Humber we come to gravels and silts full of sub-arctic marine mollusca and Corbicula fluminalis, exactly as in regions further south, and presumably of the same age as the deposits we have already mentioned as found at March in the Fenland and at Grays in Essex. ”

“ On the sides of the Humber, below Hull, submarine peat and trees are found at various depths below low water; at the mouth of the Tay, level with it; at Swansea and Owthorne, sloping beneath it; at Sutton, near Alford, on the Lincolnshire coast, visible only at the lowest ebb-tides.
As De Luc suggests, with regard to the layers of peat resting on clay at Rotterdam (Hist. de la Terre et de l'Homme, tom. v. p. 325.) , we may believe the deep buried trees and peat of the sides of the Humber to have been drifted ”

“ Certainly the inventor never expected it to be used for a vaulting-pole in leaping across streams. Twenty-five miles east of Battle Mountain the valley of the Humboldt widens into a plain of some size, through which the river meanders with many a horseshoe curve, and maps out the pot-hooks and hangers of our childhood days in mazy profusion. Amid these innumerable curves and counter-curves, clumps of willows and tall blue-joint reeds grow thickly, and afford shelter to thousands of pelicans, that here make their homes far from the disturbing presence of man. ”