Neversink River

“ The southern end of the Neversink Pond valley is the only other place whose level is so low that drift deposits could have interfered with the Rocky River drainage. The moraine at the head of this valley, crossing the country some two miles north of the city of Danbury and binding together two prominent north-and-south ridges, was evidently the barrier which choked the Rocky River valley near its mouth and turned back the preglacial river. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We knew it to be the mourning voice of the Eagle Rapids; but far as we could see, the river was quiet as a lake. We jogged on for a mile, with the invisible moaning presence about us. It was somewhat like the intangible something you feel about a powerful but sinister personality. The golden morning was saturated with it.
Suddenly, turning a sharp bend about the wall of rock that flanked the channel, a wind of noise struck us. It was like the hissing of innumerable snakes against a tonal background of muffled continuous thunder. ”

“ Rocky hills border the valley and rise abruptly from the lowland. The few tributaries of the river in this part of its course are normal in direction.
About six miles below Sherman, Rocky River enters Wood Creek Swamp, which is 51⁄2 miles long by about one mile wide and completely covers the valley floor, extending even into tributary valleys. Within the swamp the river is joined by Squantz Pond Brook and Wood Creek. Tributaries to Wood Creek include Mountain Brook and the stream passing through Barses Pond and Neversink Pond. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Mrs. Page had the Post Office Department change the name from Slab Creek to Neskowin . In 1925 the U. S . Geographic Board was requested to change the name of the stream itself from Slab Creek to Neskowin Creek , and this was done , on October 7 of that year . NESMITH POINT , Multnomah County . Nesmith Point , elevation 3878 feet , is the highest point on the cliffs overlooking the Columbia River in the gorge through the Cascade Range . It is just south of Warrendale and east of Yeon Mountain . ”

“ For a half-hour, as we proceeded, the sound increased, until it seemed close under our prow. We knew there was no cataract in the entire lower portion of the river; and yet, only from a waterfall had I ever heard a sound like that. We pulled for the shore, and went to bed with the sinister booming under our bow.
Waking in the gray dawn, we found ourselves at the mouth of the Niobrara River. Though a small stream compared with the Missouri, so great is its speed, and so tremendous the impact of its flood, that the mightier, but less impetuous Missouri is driven back a quarter of a mile. ”

“ But it was spreading all along the valley now. Women and children and old people were running down the river towards me. Women were screaming, men were shouting and running for their horses. Some were riding or running on foot towards the attackers yonder. It was so crowded at first where I was that I could not ride fast. So I turned out to the right into the prairie, and the whole flat along the stream was covered with the big mixed, singing noise that floated above the people. ”

“ When Newmark awoke once more to interest in affairs, the morning was well spent. On the river the work was going forward with the precision of clockwork. The six-foot lowering of the sluice-way had produced a fine current, which sucked the logs down from above. Men were busily engaged in “sacking” them from the sides of the pond toward its centre, lest the lowering water should leave them stranded. Below the dam the jam crew was finding plenty to do in keeping them moving in the white-water and the shallows. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Atom, with bellying sail, leaped forward down the roughening water, swung about a bend, raced with a quartering wind down the next reach, shot across another bend—and lay drifting in a golden calm. Still above us the great wind buzzed in the crags like a swarm of giant bees, and the waters about us lay like a sheet of flawless glass.
With paddles we pushed on lazily for an hour. At the next bend, where the river turned into the west, the great gale that had been roaring above us, suddenly struck us full in front. ”

“ The general surface of the town is a mountainous upland broken by many small streams which often flow through rocky ravines. There are steep declivities along the Delaware, Mount William and Point Peter being the most attractive features near Port Jervis. Along Basha's Kill the bottoms are known as the Mamakating valley. Those along the Neversink constitute the Suckapack valley, until the junction with Basha's Kill is reached, when it is called the Neversink valley proper, although also known as the Peenpack. This valley extends to the mouth of the Neversink at Carpenter's Point. ”

“ An ordinary skiff would have capsized early in the day, but the Atom II could carry a full cargo of water and still float.
By sunset the wind fell, the river smoothed as a wrinkled brow at the touch of peace. Aided by a fair current, we skulled along in the hush of evening through a land of vast green pastures with "cattle upon a thousand hills." The great wind had spread the heavens with ever deepening clouds. ”

“ The natives seldom make use of the Tampasuk beyond the spot where the river divides, though above it rafts are occasionally used; but it evidently is not a general practice, as the river is filled with fish traps, which require the stream to be dammed across with loose stone walls.
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The hills do not press closely to the river’s banks; if they do so on one side, the other is certain to have a strip of low land, along which the path is carried; in fact, from the sea to Koung village there is but one steep hill to cross. ”

“ Inverness is built in a delightful situation, skirting the Ness, which here takes the form of a beautiful, shallow river moving peacefully forward to its great receptacle, Loch Ness, a few miles away; but, although the country near the town is comparatively level, it is surrounded by mountain scenery of the most charming description. Our route lay along the north-western side of the Caledonian Canal in the direction of Fort Augustus, and we again passed the Tomnahurich Hill. ”

“ Like the Tartarin books, "La Belle Nivernaise" is distinctly local, and forms of itself an excellent guide to a little known and little visited region.
At Nevers the topography changes, or rather, the characteristics of the life of the country round about change, for the topography, so far as its profile is concerned, remains much the same for three-fourths the length of this great river. Nevers, La Charité,18 Sancerre, Gien, and Cosne follow in quick succession, all reminders of a historic past as vivid as it was varied. ”

“ Times of rising water—when the sluice-gates above had been opened—were the most prolific of opportunities. Logs rarely jam on rising water, for the simple reason that constantly the surface area of the river is increasing, thus tending to separate the logs. On the other hand, falling water, tending to crowd the drive closer together, is especially prolific of trouble. Therefore, on flood water the watchers scattered along the stretches of the river had little to do—save strand Heinzman's logs for him. ”

“ The bold, far-projected headland of Cape Newenham forms the southern pier of that remarkable funnel-like sea-opening to the Kuskokvim River—a river upon which the human ichthyophagi of the north do most congregate: three thousand savages are living here in a string of scattered hamlets that closely adjoin each other, and are nearly all located on the right-hand bank of the river as we ascend it. ”

“ The Mustinka river reaches the lake at its northern end just beyond the region of its high banks and makes a delta walling off Mud Lake. The Bois de Sioux flows north and is a sluggish stream, with low marshy banks for 15 miles to a point opposite where the Rabbit river enters from the Minnesota side. Beyond that, its banks grow higher. It flows down the eastern side of its basin so that the Minnesota lowlands on its bank are of small area. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Crossing the range at its head, we struck the Neversink quite unexpectedly about the middle of the afternoon, at a point where it was a good-sized trout stream. It proved to be one of those black mountain brooks born of innumerable ice-cold springs, nourished in the shade, and shod, as it were, with thick-matted moss, that every camper-out remembers. The fish are as black as the stream and very wild. They dart from beneath the fringed rocks, or dive with the hook into the dusky depths,—an integral part of the silence and the shadows. The spell of the moss is over all. ”

“ 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. ”

“ An excellent example of the latter type of stream is the Platte River, which is swift and loaded with sediment in its descent from the Rocky Mountains, but, on reaching the relatively more nearly level Nebraska country, it has its current sufficiently checked to force it to deposit sediment and build up its channel along many miles of its course, and this in spite of the fact that it still maintains a considerable current. In a mountainous arid region a more or less intermittent stream at times of flood becomes heavily loaded with rock débris and rushes down the mountain side. ”

“ The water-partings are characteristically level uplands, often with shallow depressions, once lakes, and some of them still so. The valleys of the greatest streams are huge shallow troughs. The valley floor of the North Platte in the foot-hills, the flood-plain of an older river, is in places 700 ft. ”

“ The cubic feet of flow into the lake from the Mustinka, before the cut-off ditch was constructed, is therefore a matter of judgment rather than calculation, dependent on the probable run-off during the period of floods from the watershed, the extend of detaining basins that then existed, the possible evaporation under then conditions, the cross-sections of the present ditches compared with probable cross-sections of the channel of the old river as it was before the ditches and the straightening of the river, and the extent to which it then overflowed its banks in time of flood. ”

“ It's all a joke, and I don't mind. Only to-morrow and then another to-morrow, and there won't be any smelters or trolley cars or ginger-ale or peanuts or sentimentalizing outers like yourself. But I'll be here howling under sun and stars."
Whereupon I posed the toiling philosopher before the camera, pressed the bulb, and descended from the summit of the cliff (as well as from my point of view) to the trail skirting northward up the river, leaving Encleadus grumbling at his crank.
Perhaps, after all, cranks really have to be turned. ”

“ All day we waded, sometimes up to our necks; sometimes we swam a bit, and sometimes we clung to the boat and kicked it on to the next shallows. Our progress was ridiculously slow, but we kept moving. When we stopped for a few minutes to smoke under the lee of a bank, our legs cramped.
To lay up one day would be only to establish a precedent for day after day of inactivity. The prevailing winds would be head winds. We clung to the shoddy hope held out by that magic name—Milk River. We knew too well that Milk River was only a snare and a delusion ”