Lys River

“ Returning down the Cor burn to the Tyne, our way lies eastward by the side of the river, which here, after splashing and sparkling over the shallows below Corbridge, narrows again to a deeper stream of swifter current, and flows between green meadows and leafy woods, fern-clad steeps and level haughs, all the way down to Ryton, where the picturesque aspect of the river ceases, and it becomes an industrial waterway. ”

“ The Reuss has many cascades and torrent gorges as it runs among the rough crags, and it falls nearly 6,000 feet before it reaches the Lake of Lucerne, this lake itself being still 1,400 feet above the sea.
A gradual current towards the end of the lake entices you under the bridge where the river starts again on its course, at first gently enough, and as if it never could get fierce and hoarse-voiced when it has taken you miles away into the woods and can deal with you all alone. ”

“ It was a little backwater hidden in a rift in the granite hills. Its mouth opening on to the waters of the Lias River was a ten foot split in the sheer face of bald rock. But inside it was quite different. Within a few yards of the absurd opening it widened abruptly, with sloping, funnel-like sides that were graciously clad by a wealth of spruce growing up the hillsides, and staunchly protected from the devastating winds above. It was a remote, stuffy spot, humid and dank, and a tangle of undergrowth profusely crowded the water’s edge. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The width of the Nile Valley in the marsh country is considerable, in places being as much as eight or nine miles from high land to high land. Through and across this dreary expanse of swamp the river wanders, at times approaching one bank and then again the other. It rarely touches either, but crosses the marshes backwards and forwards in an exasperating succession of loops and twists. On both sides of the valley the dry land is marked by a belt of thorny bush, varying in width from a few hundred yards to several miles. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Although the loess, when traced from the valley of the Rhine into that of the Neckar, or into any other of its tributaries, often undergoes some slight alteration in its character, yet there is so much identity of composition as to suggest the idea, that the mud of the main river passed far up the tributary valleys, just as that of the Mississippi, during floods, flows far up the Ohio, carrying its mud with it into the basin of that river. But the uniformity of colour and mineral composition does not extend indefinitely into the higher parts of every basin. ”

“ A la descente, les frais de halage sont réduits de moitié. Bateaux Les bateaux qui naviguent sur la Lys sont de divers, types et leurs dimensions sont très variables. Le tirant: d’eau étant limité à imgo dans la partie de la rivière située: dans la Flandre occidentale, le chargement maximum ne. dépasse pas 3oo tonnes. Inondations. Diverses inondations ont désolé la vallée de la Lys ; les plus importantes furent celles de 1841, 1872, 1880 et enfin ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Tay advances to it from Glen Dochart, and widens to a very considerable breadth as it approaches Killin; which is a row of small houses, facing the Lin; the road only between it and the houses. The broad bed of the river is there choaked up by large masses of rock lying one upon another, in every kind of form and direction. These fragments of rocks have been most of them, at least, washed thither by floods, and in a course of years have collected soil that has cemented many of them together, forming rough islands, covered with beautiful bushes, and trees of no great size ”

“ The village life, the daily duties, the dull routine from the vineyard to the grain-field, and from the étang to the forest had not changed in Saint-Lys.
There might be war somewhere; it would never come to Saint-Lys. There might be death, yonder towards the Rhine—probably beyond it, far beyond it. What of it? Death comes to all, but it comes slowly in Saint-Lys; and the days are long, and one must eat to live, and there is much to be done between the rising and the setting of a peasant's sun. [Pg 64]
There, below in Paris, were wise heads and many soldiers. ”

“ While the immediate edges of the stream are generally firm and grass-grown, with occasional gravelly beaches, there are frequent narrow strips of marsh at the bases of the mounds, especially on the left bank where innumerable springs send forth trickling rills to feed the river. ”

“ Nearly all the tributaries of the two big rivers flow from the snow banks and the canons of the Blue Mountains. Though conveying in the aggregate during the flood season an immense volume, the tributaries are too swift for navigation. They supply abundant water for irrigation where needed, and each is a superb trout stream. The largest, the Grande Ronde, is in truth an Oregon river, for its main supplies come from the Grande Ronde and Wallowa valleys, but it crosses the corner of Asotin County and enters Snake River within that scenic country. ”

“ At 2:40, came to two mills, the buildings entire, but the wheels and machinery gone, with a sluice which had formerly supplied them with water. As in the morning, we turned the water from the upper part of the sluice into the river, carried the boats along, and dragged them safely round these second series of rapids.
The soil is fertile, but the country about here is wholly uncultivated. The surface of the plain is about fifteen feet above the river, thence gradually ascending a short distance to a low range of hills; beyond which, on each side, the prospect is closed in by mountains. ”

“ 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. ”

“ This stream is certainly in the summer season, or in the long absence of rain, nothing more than a mere chain of ponds, serving as a channel to convey the waters from the eastward over this low tract. It is certain that no waters join this river from its source to this point; and passing, as it does, for the most part, through a line of country so low as to be frequently overflowed, and to an extent north and south perfectly unknown. but certainly at this place exceeding forty miles, it must cause the country to remain for ever uninhabitable, and useless for all the purposes of civilized man. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Even small rivers, when greatly swollen by rain, exhibit great energy in removing heavy masses. Thus Lyell mentions that in August, 1827, the College, a small river which flows down a slight declivity from the eastern watershed of the Cheviot Hills, carried down several thousand tons’ weight of gravel and sand to the plain of the Till. ”

“ It was already all but encircled by the stream, and it was evident, from the numerous large logs, and the considerable area of bare boulders in the neighbourhood on nearly the same level, that the upper part of the island—and under extraordinary circumstances, perhaps the whole of it—is occasionally overflown. The river at this point runs between ranges 3000 and 4000 ft. high, some of them rising almost precipitously from the banks of the stream, and all of them more or less snow-clad. ”

“ Nor does the chalk stream usually run like a western river. It moves at most times but little faster than the rivers on which men go boating or float-fishing for roach. Its environment is smooth, its course is peaceful, and its fall gradual. It is all this that gives the flavour and charm of the unexpected, when you{66} arrive at the bank and find a stream gliding past your feet as translucent as if it had just gushed out from a limestone mountain in Cumberland. ”

“ If a glacier descending from higher mountains through a tributary glen enters the main valley in which there happens to be no glacier, the river is arrested in its course and a lake is formed. The dam may be constantly repaired and may vary in height several hundreds of feet without affecting the level of the lake, so long as the surplus waters escape over a col or parting ridge of rock. The height at which the waters remain stationary is determined solely by the elevation of the col, and not by the barrier of ice, provided the barrier is higher than the col. ”

“ The news is welcome; for the voyageurs are down to short rations, and launch eagerly westward on the stream draining Nipissing Lake—French River. This is a tricky little stream in whose sands lie buried the bodies of countless French voyageurs. It is more dangerous going with rapids than against them; for the hastening current is sometimes an undertow, which sweeps the canoes into the rapids before the roar of the waterfall has given warning. And the country is barren of game. ”

“ Except during the period prior to the annual rise, when the Blue Nile is practically dry, and the waters of the White Nile fill the empty channel, the stream of the eastern river, being much stronger than that coming from the west, forces the waters of the latter right across the western shore. At all times the effect of the meeting of the two rivers is a striking one. In flood the Blue Nile brings down an immense volume of chocolate-coloured water, and holds back the discharge of the White Nile, ponding this river up and flooding the marshes for many hundred miles up-stream of the junction. ”

“ Some streams also become coloured by the earth they pass over, or mingle readily with the waters that flow into theirs. But there are a few--and they are always the mightiest and most profound--which retain their original hue and character, receive the tribute of other streams, pass over rocks and mountains, and through the midst of deep lakes, without the Rhone losing its glossy blue in the bosom of Lake Leman, or the Rhine mingling its clear stream with the waters of Constance or the current of the Maine. ”