River Ouse

“ Having its origin on the slopes of the Cam mountain, in the north-west of the county, it traverses, in the sixty or seventy miles of its course to the Ouse, almost every description of the scenery for which this great division of England is famous. Over moorland and meadowland, rushing madly down precipitous rocks and flowing placidly along fertile plains, shut up in some parts within deep gorges and at other points spreading out to river-like dimensions, it has an ever-varying charm to all who trace its progress. ”

“ In its northward course from this point the river receives from the E. the Lark, the Little Ouse, or Brandon river, and the Wissey. Below Denver sluice, 16 m. from the mouth, the Ouse is tidal. It flows past King's Lynn, and enters the Wash near the S.E. corner. The river is locked up to Bedford, a distance of 741/2 m. by the direct course. In the lower part it bears a considerable traffic, but above St Ives it is little used, and above St Neot's navigation has ceased. The drainage area of the Great Ouse is 2607 sq. m. ”

“ 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 slopes rise softly from the river-plain, now projecting, now retreating, as the valley winds from side to side. A gentle ascent brings us from the banks of the Ouse up to the highest part of the ground in the vicinity, and places before our eyes a wide sweep of rich agricultural country, with peeps of village spires and gleams of the winding river. ”

“ The great width of the valley of the Ouse, which is sometimes 2 miles, has not been expressed in the diagram. It may have been shaped out by the joint action of the river and the tides when this part of England was emerging from the waters of the glacial sea, the boulder clay being first cut through, and then an equal thickness of underlying Oolite. After this denudation, which may have accompanied the emergence of the land, the country was inhabited by the primitive people who fashioned the flint tools. ”

“ A north-easterly direction is then resumed past St Neot's to Godmanchester and Huntingdon, when the river trends easterly to St Ives. Hitherto the Ouse has watered an open fertile valley, and there are many beautiful wooded reaches between Bedford and St Ives, while the river abounds in coarse fish. Below St Ives the river debouches suddenly upon the Fens; its fall from this point to the mouth, a distance of 55 m. by the old course, is little more than 20 ft. (the extensive system of artificial drainage cuts connected with the river is considered under Fens) . ”

“ Several small rivers, whose banks are very high, and nearly perpendicular, intersect this part of the country, and render travelling an undertaking of difficult and dangerous performance. Horses, in ascending and descending these steep banks, frequently fall, and are sometimes dashed to pieces, in spite of the best exertions of their drivers. From the head of Lake Ontario to the Grand River Ouse, the river takes a western direction, and thence to the township of Woodhouse its inclination is southern, but from Woodhouse to Port Talbot it preserves a south-western course. ”

“ Other British Rivers.—The next longest river to northward is the Great Ouse, navigable from the west for ninety miles to Bedford; then we come to the group of rivers which water the long plain of York, and unite in the estuary of the Humber, including the Trent from the south, navigable one hundred and five miles to Burton; the Yorkshire Ouse, navigable forty-five miles to the city of York, with its main tributary the Derwent. Farther north are the Tees and Wear, and the busy Tyne. Passing into Scotland, we reach the Tweed, valuable for its fisheries, but unnavigable ”

“ The country drained by the Little Ouse seems at one time to have been almost covered by Glacial deposits, including beds of shingle, composed for the greater part of quartzite pebbles. The beds at Brandon Down are nearer the sea than any analogous beds towards the source of the stream, and occupy a higher position relatively to the existing river, being 90 feet above it. If they resulted from river-action, they would, in accordance with the hypothesis, be among the oldest of the river- deposits ”

“ In the Ouse the tide rises and falls, so it is necessary to stop the mouths of the great drains going into it, which is done by a structure of timber or brick-work like the gates of a dock, which close at high tides to keep out the sea-water, and open at low tides to let out the land water. Either from insufficient workmanship or bad locality, or unusual pressure, or from burrowing animals, the land water, or sea water, or both, made a flank movement, and burst up the whole sluice, so that the tide, instead of being confined to the river, obtained free way up the drain also. ”

“ The Ouse bounds it to the east and the Adur to the west, and the strip of land runs north and south between these two river valleys; it starts from the sea coast by which entry is made into the county, and loses itself in the forest to the north.
Its principal town, Lewes, has all those charac{80}teristics which distinguish the central towns of the countrysides of Western Europe, save that it possesses no cathedral. It is a place naturally susceptible of fortification. It is Roman, and probably pre-Roman in its origins. ”

“ The Great Ouse is not of the bigness it once boasted, in days before the Old and New Bedford Rivers were cut, two hundred and sixty years ago, to carry its sluggish waters away by a direct route to the sea, and the fair-weather pilgrim marvels at the bridge and at the great banks he sees stretching away along its course to protect the surrounding lands from being flooded. That they are needed is evident enough from the care taken to repair them, and from a sight of the men digging hard by in the greasy gault to obtain the repairing materials. ”

“ Today the city of Owosso has 15,000 residents, and is more beautiful than it was in the days of old. Looking out of the studio windows of a wonderful writing castle which lies along the banks of the waters of the Shiawassee river, there can be seen one place that shall never be shed of the willows that wave so gently in the breeze. It is the little island in the very center of the river which flows through Owosso in a great sweeping bend. ”

“ Every day we went to a seat upon a rock at the end of this road; from there, through the whole valley of Ossau, you follow the torrent grown into a river; the rich valley, a mosaic of yellow harvests and green fields, broadly opens out to the confines of the landscape, and allows the eye to lose itself in the dim distance of Béarn. From each side three mountains strike out their feet towards the river, and cause the outline of the plain to rise and fall in waves; the furthest slope down like pyramids, and their pale blue declivities stand out upon the rosy zone of the dim sky. ”

“ The affluents of the Seine below Paris are the Oise, its principal tributary, which has its birth in the distant Ardennes in Belgium; the Epte, a “pure water” stream which flows through a charming valley, from Forges-les-Eaux to Giverny near Vernon; the Andelle, less important, but a wonderfully picturesque little river, which joins the parent stream near Pont de l’Arche. ”

“ At last the bells ceased, and with their note the sun withdrew. The piece was at an end; shadow and silence possessed the valley of the Oise. We took to the paddle with glad hearts, like people who have sat out a noble performance and returned to work. The river was more dangerous here; it ran swifter, the eddies were more sudden and violent. All the way down we had had our fill of difficulties. Sometimes it was a weir which could be shot, sometimes one so shallow and full of stakes that we must withdraw the boats from the water and carry them round. ”

“ Now the small river, or rather rivulet, of Ouzel, from which the town takes its name, steals out from deep banks covered with brushwood or aged trees, and widening into brief importance, glides under the arches of an ancient bridge; runs on, clear and shallow, to refresh low fertile dairy-meadows, dotted with kine; and finally quits the view, as brake and copse close round its narrowing, winding way ”

“ Here at Compiègne the vigour of the Oise ends. Above it is a weakly, purling stream, the greater part of the traffic going by the Canal Lateral, while below it broadens out into a workable, industrial sort of a waterway which is doing its best to contribute its share to the prosperity of France.
We learn here, as elsewhere, where it has been attempted, that the hand of man cannot irretrievably make or reclaim the course of a river. Deprived of its natural bed and windings, it will always form new ones of its own making in conformity to the law of nature. ”

“ This embankment kept back, to the west and to the east, the tide-water of the Well Stream (see p. 399) , a wide inlet of the sea, narrowing southward till it reached its extremity at Wisbech, and forming the estuary for the united outfall of all the Fenland waterways. In later days operations connected with the draining of the fens have diverted nearly the whole (p. 424) volume of the Great Ouse and its tributary streams to fall into the sea at King's Lynn, and have led the Nene straight to Wisbech. ”

“ Far beneath lay the red-roofed city, its devious lanes and its many gray churches,—crumbling relics of ancient ecclesiastical power,—distinctly visible. Through the plain, and far away toward the south and east, ran the silver thread of the Ouse, while all around, as far as the eye could reach, stretched forth a smiling landscape of emerald meadow and cultivated field; here a patch of woodland, and there a silver gleam of wave; here a manor-house nestled amid stately trees, and there an ivy-covered fragment of ruined masonry ”

“ The River Ashe, after a drowsy and meandering childhood, passed peacefully among the sedges and marigolds of its water meadows, suddenly and somewhat disconcertingly grows up and, without any period of transition and adolescence, becomes, from being a mere girl of a rivulet, a male and full-blooded estuary of the sea. ”

“ Our route lay through South Missouri, along a high barren ridge, for eighty miles. If I remember rightly, we passed no town till we came to Linn creek, where we crossed the Osage river, which, I believe, is the head of navigation. It is a small town but is a very business like little place. As we crossed the river a little boat steamed away from the landing, loaded, as I afterward learned, with nineteen tons of deer hides, besides other peltries and furs. ”

“ It receives numerous tributaries from the moors, then breaches the low hills below Malton in a narrow picturesque valley, and debouches upon the central plain of Yorkshire. Its direction, hitherto westerly and south-westerly from the Carrs, now becomes southerly, and it flows roughly parallel to the Ouse, which it joins near Barmby-on-the-Marsh, in the level district between Selby and the head of the Humber estuary, after a course, excluding minor sinuosities, of about 70 m. As a tributary of the Ouse it is included in the Humber basin. ”

“ Then go forth and take a turn under the trees of the New Walk on the bank of the Ouse, and see a much-frequented resort of the citizens, who certainly cannot boast that their environs are romantic. You would hardly believe that the stream flowing so placidly by embosoms the rapid rivers we crossed so often while in the mountains. ”

“ Oust also speaks of the Roman occupation; the name is derived from Augusta. At Oust the road leaves the valley of the Salat to ascend its tributary vale of the Garbet; to the south snowy crests appear and the cascade of Arse comes in view. The Nine Springs is passed, supposed to have an underground course from the marshy lake of Lhers, at a distance of four miles. Usually it gives but little water; but after a storm the source bursts forth suddenly with violence and pours down in cascade over the rocks. ”

“ He would sit on the bank of the river for half a sun, watching her canoe, as she swept it over the current, and listening to her charming songs in which his own name was mentioned with so much love. And, when fatigued by her labour she guided her bark to the shore, Ohguesse was sure to meet her with outstretched arms, and assist her in the labour of carrying the canoe to its shed of pine branches. In the long evenings of the moons of snow and frost she would sit and relate to him—for her memory had not left her—tales of the goodness of the Great Spirit and the wickedness of the Evil Spirit ”

“ That I had allowed myself to be completely turned around was proven by the current of the river, for without such evidence I would have gone toward the south, believing I was making my way northward.
"The canoe must be above us," Paul said as we halted, "and by following the shore it should be possible to come upon it." ”

“ The ridge is clay covered to the flat summit, where knolls of gneiss project. Beyond the valley of the Odei, to the north, is a rolling forested country with hills clay-covered to the tops, rising by gradual slopes to about a hundred feet above the intervening valleys, that are themselves from twenty to fifty feet above the river level. For the next twenty-eight miles the river, flowing in a rock-bound basin, has the character of a long, narrow lake from half a mile to over a mile in width. ”