New River

“ Whether it be of the great rivers hurrying to the sea, or the white cascades or streams rippling fetlock-deep across the track, that voice of many glasses of water is always in one’s ears. There are times when the fierceness of the rivers fills one with a sense of impotence. A wide river-bed strewn with tree trunks and enormous boulders when the flood comes down—and they chafe and roll in wild turmoil—is an awesome enough sort of place. And the more you have to do with New Zealand rivers, the stronger becomes the awe in which you hold them. ”

“ Indeed, as Harry freed her from her moorings, she fairly seemed to bound out into the river with the keen enjoyment of a creature alive in every part. It is hard to picture that East River as it looked a hundred years ago, with wooded and grass-grown banks in place of wharves and warehouses, and with only an occasional sail, where to-day the great, unwieldy ferry-boats plow from shore to shore, and an army of smaller craft steam noisily hither and thither. ”

“ The next morning I took the steamer down the river to Blue Spring, a distance of some thirty miles, on my way back to New Smyrna, to a place where there were accessible woods, a beach, and, not least, a daily sea breeze. The river in that part of its course is comfortably narrow,—a great advantage,—winding through cypress swamps, hammock woods, stretches of prairie, and in one place a pine barren; an interesting and in many ways beautiful country, but so unwholesome looking as to lose much of its attractiveness. ”

“ Back of the river rises a mountain, the rocks of which look like the pipes of an organ. The town is well laid out in checkerboard fashion; it runs up hill and down and here and there takes a jump out into the country. ”

“ At all events, he will discover—and that we hold to be something worth recording—that his eyes have seldom looked upon a more enchanting series of landscapes than stretches along this river, in one long and varied line of beauty, from New Hope and the Nockamixon Rocks, almost to its sources. ”

“ In a still evening several are heard at once, in various keys, forming a kind of savage music; one, half a mile above the {347} town in a wood, seems upwards of a hundred feet fall.—About as much water as is in the New River precipitates itself over a perpendicular rock into a natural bason, where it seems to recover from its fall before it takes a second and a third tumble over huge stones that break it into a number of streams. ”

“ This basin, with that of the Greenbrier on the other side of New River, forms the broadest stretch of cultivated land found between the mountain ranges, though the whole country is rough and broken even here. ”

“ Nothing could be more beautiful than its situation on the banks of the Exe, formed by the tide more into a lake than a river. On every side it was sheltered: on the north by rising ground and the woods of the New Forest, and on the east again by the Forest and more hills, from whence an aqueduct brought down the water for the use of the monks ”

“ As compared with the port of New-York, the narrowness of the river here rather increases than lessens the effect, bringing the forest of masts and the bulk of steamers close together, while, in our great harbour, they are stretched along such a circuit of shore, or anchored in such an expanse of water, as materially diminishes the general impression of multitude and immensity. ”

“ From the Posaik to the North River the country is hilly, barren, and uninteresting, till you come very near the latter, when a noble view opens all at once of the city of New York on the opposite shore, of the harbour, and shipping. The river, which is very grand, can be traced for several miles above the city; the banks are very steep on the Jersey side, and beautifully wooded, the trees almost dipping into the water: numbers of vessels plying about in every part render the scene extremely sprightly and interesting. ”

“ We stop to land a passenger at the mouth of the Von River, which comes tearing down through the gorges, bringing with it tons upon tons of gravel and shingle, which in its shifting course, terraces the plain, and carries ruin and desolation in its path. During the last few years the stream has shifted its bed fully a mile, and in its migration it has cut away one of the finest orchards that was in all the lake district. ”

“ Considering the length of the road by land from New England to Port Royal and Acadia, the obstacles to be encountered in the rivers that fall into the sea along 109 the coast, which will be more difficult to cross near the mouth; all these circumstances render the communication by land a veritable chimera; the more so that the way by sea from the remotest part of New England to Port Royal is so short and so easy, while that by land would be long, painful and difficult. ”

“ The North River is better than two miles over to Powles Hook, which is a strong work opposite to New York, but is exposed to the driving of the ice in winter, whereby ships are prevented from lying therein during that season of the year. The land on the North River side is high and bold, but on the East River it gradually descends in a beautiful declivity to the water's edge.... ”

“ Louis, New Orleans and Kansas City, where the river is wide and the land across the river not attractive, the river forms practically an absolute bar to growth. At Toledo, Portland, Ore., Cincinnati, Pittsburg and Des Creeks are of chief importance when their erosion has worn a deep and wide ravine, the difference in level constituting a bar to a city's growth rather than the creek itself. When the creek is narrow it is frequently covered over and ceases to exert any influence, as in New York, Richmond, and other cities. ”

“ The people are not Mormons; they are newcomers and hence what might be called “tenderfeet.” They will learn, and some day Green River will be a beautiful little city, but to-day it lies bare and dusty and new, baking in the sun.
Monday, Doc and I went on an exploring trip down the river and Bob stayed about the camp. We climbed up on top of a bare, ragged mountain to see what we could of the country and the river, but with not much success. The river runs through a canyon and can not be seen, and the country is much the same south of us,--hard, ragged desert buttes. ”

“ As has been stated in the preceding pages, the drainage of the lake-basin apparently flowed for ages by New York; and it is an interesting fact that the great tide of population and business which has set in from the Eastern States toward the interior has chiefly passed through the gap cut in the highlands by the old river whose course we have endeavored to trace. ”

“ The district, however, seems to have been by far the most flourishing of any adjoining the New Forest, owing, no doubt, to the immigration which the various creeks invited, and the remains of salterns still show its former prosperity. Next to it came the Valley of the Avon, its mills often rented, in Domesday, by a payment of the eels caught in the river. ”

“ These hills occur very frequently, and wherever found the river makes a broad circuit and comes up with them again after some distance has been traversed. We now found the native shelters and abandoned houses becoming more plentiful; and, though we saw no natives we heard them, and also heard their dogs howling. The level of the river we found to be rapidly rising, the current getting stronger, and its direction more circuitous. We continued to ascend the river, stopping in the forenoon to collect and take observations, still passing the same scenery ”

“ From the Falls of Saint Anthony to the junction with the Missouri, near Saint Louis, the river flows through a valley of great beauty and uniform fertility. Cliffs and rocky bluffs, from 200 to 300 feet high, give a picturesque character to that part of the valley below Rock Island, where it strikes the Carboniferous strata, the geological formation of the valley, to about 100 miles below the Missouri. ”

“ It is about seven years since several families from New England commenced this beautiful settlement. The situation is almost a peninsula, formed by a continued bending of the river in an extent of four miles, the whole of which is cultivated in front, but the clearing extends back only one hundred and fifty rods, where is a lake, and some low swampy land, always inundated during the summer freshes. There are sixteen families, who occupy each a front of only forty rods, so that the settlement has the appearance of a straggling village. ”

“ I speak of Richmond-Hill as being the head of the river it there growing very shallow, and dividing into two branches. The high rocky country which forms Broken Bay, is lost as you proceed up the Hawkesbury, had the banks of the river are there covered with timber: the soil is rich light mould; and judging from the little we saw of the country, I should suppose it good land to a very considerable extent. The other branches of fresh water are shoals, but probably run many miles further into the country than we could trace them in our boats. ”

“ Concerning the country and manners of the Savages of New France. RIVERS OF NEW FRANCE; NATURE OF THE SOIL; WILD BEASTS, FISH, BIRDS, ETC. THERE are two great rivers in New France. One, called by the natives Canada, a name thence extended to the whole country, is now called the river St. Lawrence, and flows in a very broad channel from west to east. The other, named Mississippi, flows from North to South, through vast regions, for the most part still unknown. ”

“ The river about here presents a most beautiful appearance; in one place, for instance, a long, straight reach, with the hills rising in places perpendicularly 300 feet from the river, which is about 50 to 60 feet wide, and flows with great force through the gully or funnel formed by the high banks, which are covered with beautiful trees on the top, and even their steep sides are covered with plants and vegetation, among which, flowering creepers, ground orchids, ferns, and tree-ferns are numerous. The country appears to be comparatively thickly populated. ”

“ However, it may be about the valleys, we are very sure that the river made many, many other things that we know about. Did you ever hear of the orator in the New York Legislature, who wondered how it was that the rivers most always flowed by the big cities? He certainly got his "cart before the horse," for it is the big cities that always grow by the big rivers. History has always grown along the banks of rivers, because all civilization has grown along their banks. The boundaries of nations change. ”

“ Vast numbers of men were employed in strengthening the levees above New Orleans. The Missouri River had risen higher than ever before, and whole villages had been carried away in the North-western States. ”

“ A river is more than an amenity, it is a treasure. It offers a necessity of life that must be rationed among those who have power over it. ”

“ And the air is so pleasant, and the magnolias so full of flower, the river so full of life, alligators and fishes splashing about, large and beautiful water-fowl on all hands; everything is so luxuriant—so wonderfully rich, wild, and lovely—it is a never-ending fairy scene; especially in the evenings when the moon rises and throws her mystic half light and half shadow into the arches and pillared aisles of these marvellous natural temples. I sit in silence on the piazza, and gaze upon it with devotion and rapture, as, at every bend of the river, new and striking scenes present themselves ”

“ Our life sweeps onward like a river, brushing in here a little sand, there a few rushes, till the accumulated drift-wood chokes the current, or some larger tree falling across it turns it into a new channel. ”

“ Where the trade route follows a river, cities arise either near the mouth where ocean and river navigation meet, as at New Orleans or Philadelphia, at the head of rivers where river and creek navigation meet, as at Albany, Richmond and St. ”

“ As they ripple by the town the waters sing a pretty song; but a stone’s-throw or two above the comely old bridge which spans them close to where the castle frowned upon all who sought to cross it with hostile intent, it glides smooth and silent, as though it had fallen asleep. Now the valley narrows into a glen, winding and profound; and at Neidpath, in full view of the town, the river dwindles into the merest burn, which it would be no great feat to leap across. But what a burn, and what a glen! Nothing yet seen, or still to be seen, is quite so superb as what now meets the view. ”

“ Two or three hundred yards has been the limit of the view ahead, as the stream swerves gracefully from the slightest rise of land, and flows now east, now north, now east, now south again. So long a stretch of navigable water is not common on the Delectable River, and we make the most of it, moving leisurely, and prisoning the everchanging picture with the imperfect camera of the eyes. ”

“ The rivers of the South creep under dim arboreal archways hung with banners of waving moss. The Delaware and the Hudson and the Connecticut are the children of the Catskills and the Adirondacks and the White Mountains, cradled among the forests of spruce and hemlock, playing through a wild woodland youth, gathering strength from numberless tributaries to bear their great burdens of lumber and turn the wheels of many mills, issuing from the hills to water a thousand farms, and descending at last, beside new cities, to the ancient sea. ”

“ Beyond all these comes a wilder and barer district, where the hills draw closer to the river, and cultivation and population become more rare, and where at length, over the massive and rounded outlines of the fells, as we rise towards the great “dorsal ridge” of England, we catch glimpses of the Cumberland Mountains and of the Cheviots.
To trace the Wear upwards or downwards is like ascending or descending the stream of English history; from the busy present we move back into the feudal age, and at length into the quietude of primitive Nature. ”