Nerbudda River

“ A curious phenomenon is the abrupt and unreasonable behavior of the rivers and streams in that region, which, like the North Platte of Nebraska, disappear from the surface of the earth and lose themselves in underground passages called ponars, reappearing in the most eccentric and surprising manner. The Narenta is the only river that finds its way to the sea entirely above ground. ”

“ But the great flood of the spring had swept the valley clean. Where the year before there were prosperous ranch establishments with gasoline pumping plants, there was only desolation now. It was as though we traveled in the path of a devastating army. Perhaps the summer of 1908 was the most unfavorable season for such a trip in the last fifty years. Steamboating on the upper river is only a memory. There are now no wood-yards as formerly. We found ourselves with no certainty of procuring grub and oil; our engine became more and more untrustworthy; our paddles had been lost. ”

“ Dean Vincent's conjectured etymology of Nahr-Budda, 'River of Budda,' is a caution against such guesses.
c. 1020.—"From Dhár southwards to the R. Nerbadda nine (parasangs) ; thence to Mahrat-des ... eighteen ..."—Al-Birūnī, in Elliot, i. 60. The reading of Nerbadda is however doubtful. c. 1310.—"There were means of crossing all the rivers, but the Nerbádda was such that you might say it was a remnant of the universal deluge."—Amír Khusrú, in Elliot, i. 79.
[1616.—"The King rode to the riuer of Darbadath."—Sir T. Roe, Hak. Soc. ii. 413. In his list (ii. 539) he has Narbadah.] ”

“ Hugh was able after many days to decide that the natives knew nothing of the outside world and, furthermore, that no ships came into that part of the sea on account of the immense number of hidden reefs. The island on which they had been cast bore a name which sounded so much like Nedra that they spelled it in that way. In course of time she christened the spots of interest about her. Her list of good English names for this utterly heathen community covered such places as Velvet Valley, Hamilton Hills, Shadburn Rapids, Ridgeway River, Veath Forest and others. ”

“ The defile is extremely narrow and the rocks high and steep; there is but room for the stream and train at the foot of them. It is like travelling through a deep cutting, but is considered very fine. The earth is dark red, like anchovy paste, and gives the river such an unpleasantly gory appearance that one half expects it to steam, and the station at the top of the pass is called Crvena Reka, "The Red Stream." ”

“ Five miles down this cleft, called valley, to Gudvangen run the road and the little river and the narrow strips of meadow, dark, thin, and ghastly; long months in utter darkness this Nerodal lies, and never, even at summer's best and longest, has it more than a half-day of sun. The mountains rise in sheer black walls on either hand,—bare rock in colossal shafts and peaks, three, four, and even five thousand feet high; snow in the rifts at top ”

“ Even within 300 or 400 feet of the Nile the water in the wells does not begin to rise for eight or ten days, while at the distance of half a mile it is delayed till the floods are actually subsiding. Hence the curious phenomenon that, when the Nile is at its lowest ebb, the water in wells at a distance from the stream rises some 10 or 12 feet higher than the river itself. The cultivators are thus enabled to continue the work of irrigation, which would otherwise be impossible. ”

“ November 13.—Our way led us through the village of Tale to the Ringbi river, a stream as rapid as the Kalai. There is a strong bamboo bridge over it, but we crossed by some bamboos laid side by side where the river was narrowest. To the north-west of the village, on a parallel ridge trending northward from the same range of hills, is the village of Nambura. We followed the stream up for 5 miles by a circuitous trail, and then crossed over again to the right bank, a little below Nambura. ”

“ The view from its summit is very fine, especially southward, up the course of that hitherto mysterious Nile as far as the eye can reach—and that a very small part certainly of its fifteen hundred miles of sparkling water. The Nile river is unique; instead of increasing in volume like other rivers as it flows downward, it gradually decreases, because it receives no additional streams, while—besides its annual inundation—it constantly enriches with its water all its thirsty banks, and the hot atmosphere refreshes itself all along that vast length with its evaporation. ”

“ This river, which rises not far from the east side of Nyassa, descends from the uplands in a far more precipitous channel than the Lujenda. Above the confluence it pierces a deep gorge flanked by granite walls, while the current is strewn with huge boulders as destitute of vegetation as are the cliffs themselves that here confine the stream in its stony bed. ”

“ Then as now the whole country, with the exception of a fringe on the coast of the Mediterranean, was almost rainless, and owed its immense fertility entirely to the annual inundation of the Nile, which, regulated by an elaborate system of dams and canals, was distributed over the fields, renewing the soil year by year with a fresh deposit of mud washed down from the great equatorial lakes and the mountains of Abyssinia. Hence the rise of the river has always been watched by the inhabitants with the utmost anxiety ”

“ This magnificent stream, though it is unnavigable owing to frequent rapids, has stretches miles long, down which a man-of-war could steam, and after its junction with the Elands’ River it grows larger and larger till, pursuing a north-east course, it at length falls into the mighty Limpopo. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The two friends made light of these adventures, yet there was always the chance that a bullet might stretch them dead on the desert sands and that they would for ever disappear in the East.
The great mounds of Nimroud, opposite Mosul, wielded a potent spell over Layard. He climbed about them, dreamed over them, picked up bits of brick with arrow-headed writing on them. Often he asked himself what lay under his feet. He saw bits of alabaster sticking out of the soil where the rains had washed them bare. The remains of a dam [Pg 125] peeped out of the river Tigris. He asked an Arab who built it. ”

“ Small dug-out canoes are also used by the natives for travelling along the river. Navigation in a small launch would probably be quite possible as far as Neum for several months in the year. The larger Nile steamers would most likely be unable to navigate this stream owing to the extraordinary sharp curves and bends of the river, the stream when in flood being very swift. ”

“ Indeed the Bareda is a small stream. It would with us be called a good mill stream. We would rather term it a creek than a river. It is mostly confined in a channel of eight or ten yards wide, and then may be waded without coming above the knee. Much of the water of these rivers is exhausted in irrigation. They flow east, and after rendering a noble plain very fertile and productive for twenty or thirty miles, form a lake or marsh—they have no outlet. I wished much to ride eastward through this plain and see the country about the lake, but the time of the year and other causes prevented. ”

“ A gray mist rolled with the wind, and dull clouds scudded over. We pitched camp in a clump of cottonwoods and made flapjacks; after which the Kid and I, taking our blankets and the rifle, set out to explore Hell Creek.
Reveille!
The Pen and Key Ranch.
The windings of the ravine soon hid us from the river, and we found ourselves in a melancholy world, without life and without any human significance. It was very easy to imagine one's self lost amid the drear ashen craters of the moon. We pushed on up the creek, kicking up clouds of alkali dust as we went. ”

“ At this season the whole country is dry, but during the summer rains it is inundated by the Nárí river, which rises in the hills about Dadur, and spreads its floods broadcast all over the desert tract extending from Gandáva to Jacobabad. Most of this water is allowed to run waste, and from want of care much is lost by evaporation. Under a settled government there is little doubt that most of this desert tract could be brought under cultivation, for the soil appears very good, and the facilities for irrigation during the summer months are at hand. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Narenta in its upper course is very dangerous to bathe in, since the current is not only very rapid, but has short cuts by underground caverns which form whirlpools not easy to detect in the general turmoil of the surface waters, but which are capable none the less of occasionally sucking down into earth’s bowels some of the enormous trees which are seen to float down this river. We, however, discovered a safe and sheltered pool of this wonderful blue-emerald purity, in which we disported ourselves while the soup of our mid-day meal was brewing on the shore. ”

“ Various schemes were suggested at this time for drawing off the stagnant waters, as well as for the future regular drainage of the valley, and small operations for those purposes were undertaken with partial success; but it was feared that the discharge of the accumulated waters into the Tiber would produce a dangerous inundation, while the diversion of the drainage into the Arno would increase the violence of the floods to which that river was very subject, and no decisive steps were taken. ”

“ For several miles from the shore its dark grey stream continues to flow in a separate channel without intermingling with the blue waters of the lake.
The natives have a great veneration for their river, and one of the titles they give it seems to justify the hypothesis that it is really the main headstream of the Nile. According to Stanley they call it the "mother" of the "Stony Current," that is, of the emissary of Lake Nyanza in Uganda. At its north-west angle the lake is joined by the Kalonga, another copious river rising in the west in the neighbourhood of Lake Mwutan-Nzigé. ”

“ If it wasn't for the trees and brush, which prevent us seeing just where every little rise is, it would be comparatively easy, but unless we know the lie of the ground, we might plan a ditch just on the wrong side of a ridge of comparatively solid earth, which would divert the entire stream. Of course, there's a pretty good fall to the river, both the Mud River and the Red Lake River, but even so, an unobserved ridge of earth a few feet high, running along for a couple of miles would throw out the value of that particular ditch and create the cause for a new drainage area. ”

“ If this last current of the blue river shall eventually be dammed up, its mass of water will rush with the strength of a powerful mountain torrent against the mouth of the white stream, and raise it, because its last strength is already expended, even at a moderate height of water, by the projecting rocks and the islands impeding its mouth. ”

“ These observations of the thermometer agreed with the natural appearance of the country, the Asua river forming the main drain in a deep valley, into which innumerable rivulets convey the drainage from both north and south. ”

“ One arm of the river must always have taken the present lower and deeper course; while the other must of necessity have run low—perhaps very nearly dry—as the inundation subsided every spring.
There remains no monumental record of this event; but the facts speak for themselves. The great channel is there. The old Nile mud is there—buried for the most part in sand, but still visible on many a rocky shelf and plateau between Assûan and Philæ. There are even places where the surface of the mass is seen to be scooped out, as if by the sudden rush of the departing waters. ”

“ The hills, absolutely bare, rise above the valley for many thousands of feet in fantastic pinnacles and cliffs. It is a scene of the wildest desolation." The Nari river, running through the gorge, is formed by a combination of three streams having but little water on ordinary occasions, but becoming, in time of flood, a raging torrent which fills up the whole gorge for miles, attains a depth of ten feet, and has a velocity of five feet per second. Over this river the railway had to be carried in five different places. Not alone bridges, but heavy embankments, cuttings and tunnels were needed. ”