River Suir

“ From Frensham village a road runs straight across the common to the south-west corner of the Great Pond, but the prettiest road to the water is by the side of the Wey. The Wey runs here deep and clean, edged with forget-me-nots through all the summer, winding and straightening through serene and shining pastures. There is nothing quieter in all Surrey than this little path by the tiny river, with the bank on one side rich with roses and elderflower, and on the other the sunlight gleaming on the chestnut coats of the cattle moving slowly through the sedge. ”

“ Suez, washed upon one side by the sea, is encircled upon the others by the barren wastes of the desert. No tree, shrub, or blade of grass, relieves the gloomy sterility of the landscape. We hasten on by rail. Soon a long, [286] low line of water appears, just beside the railroad track. Behold, it is the Nile—that river cradled in the depths of mysterious caverns, forcing its way through granite ledges and mountain barriers, rushing over cataracts, foaming through narrows, then flowing gently onward, singing amid perpetual sunshine, until it empties by its seven mouths into the great blue sea. ”

“ December 9, 1849.—Bahraetch, ten miles north-east. We encamped on a fine sward, on the left bank of the Surjoo river, a beautiful clear stream. The cultivation very scanty, but the soil good, with water everywhere, within a few feet of the surface. Groves and single trees less numerous; and of villages and hamlets we saw none. Under good government, the whole country might, in a few years, be made a beautiful garden. The river Surjoo is like a winding stream in a park; and its banks might, everywhere, be cultivated to the water's edge. No ravines, jungle, or steep embankments. ”

“ All who journey on the Nile, whether in commerce or war, will pay their tribute of respect and gratitude; for the great river has befriended all races and every age. Through all the centuries it has performed the annual miracle of its flood. Every year when the rains fall and the mountain snows of Central Africa begin to melt, the head-streams become torrents and the great lakes are filled to the brim. ”

“ I never was at the crossing of the Sevier river in summer, for seven years after our settlements in Iron county had been established, without experiencing frost; and now the Sevier valley produces luxuriant fields of grain and vegetables in the season thereof, in every place where the water has been taken out from the mouth of that river to the head of it, nearly nine thousand feet above the level of the sea. Who has done this? God and the Saints have done it! ”

“ It is worth the while to make a voyage up this stream, if you go no farther than Sudbury, only to see how much country there is in the rear of us; great hills, and a hundred brooks, and farm-houses, and barns, and haystacks, you never saw before, and men everywhere, Sudbury, that is Southborough men, and Wayland, and Nine-Acre-Corner men, and Bound Rock, where four towns bound on a rock in the river, Lincoln, Wayland, Sudbury, Concord. Many waves are there agitated by the wind, keeping nature fresh, the spray blowing in your face, reeds and rushes waving ”

“ Nevertheless, for suitableness of navigation, and for rich land on both sides, all the way up, the South River excels the North; but what gives the North River the preference, and crowns it over the South River, is its salubrious climate; though above Christina Creek the South River is healthy, and it is every day becoming more so, along the whole of that river. On the North River, however, one has not to wait and die before this improvement may take place. ”

“ In former times, Suez was a great city well supplied with cisterns for holding water, and had a Kalij or canal cut all the way from the Nile, by which these cisterns were annually filled at the overflow of the river, which served them with water all the rest of the year. Being afterwards destroyed by the Mahometans, the canal was filled up, and all the water that is drank at Suez is brought upon camels from certain ponds or wells six miles distant; which water, though very brackish, they are obliged to drink; every fifty men being allowed as much water as a camel can carry. ”

“ To the Soar come tributary streams from the pasture lands of Leicester, dear to the fox-hunter, which tributaries, like the river itself, glide past many a quiet village, of which the churches are often of no little interest, and the houses not seldom afford to us excellent specimens of the domestic architecture of our country from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century. The junction of the Soar is not far from another junction, which has given both an origin and a name to what is rapidly becoming a town. ”

“ Across the river were the well-wooded hills of Sugar Island, with here and there a settler's shanty and clearing. To the left hand could still be seen the broad river winding its course down toward Lake George, the smaller stream, called Garden River, joining it a short distance below. Then behind, the scene was equally, if not more grand—high rocky hills scantily clad with fir and birch-trees. We felt that we were now indeed in the land of the Indian, far away from civilization; no railways, no telegraphs, no omnibuses or street cars, no hotels or shops for many hundred miles. ”

“ River Suse discharges itself into the ocean. This fine river rises at Ras-el-Wed, at the foot of Atlas, about thirty miles from the city of Terodant. The (fulahs) cultivators of land, and the gardeners of Suse have drained off this river so much in its passage through the plains of Howara and Exima, that it is fordable at its mouth at low water in the summer, so that camels and other animals are enabled to cross it with burthens on their backs: at its mouth is a bar of sand which at low water almost separates it from the ocean. ”

“ Two thousand feet below, between these two ranges, flowed, in a wide barren valley, a river called the Darma Yankti. This river is the principal source of that great river which afterward takes the name of Sutlej. I was glad to be the first white man to visit the place where it has its birth. In the distance a flat plateau, rising some eight hundred feet above the river and resembling a gigantic railway embankment, could be seen for many miles. Far away to the north stood a chain of high blue mountains capped with snow—undoubtedly the Gangri chain with the Kelas peaks. ”

“ Still standing, half-facing the audience, he looked past the Judge out of a window as if gazing upon something far in the distance, and continued:
“ ‘I seem to be standing on the high bank of a great river, with my wife and little girl by my side. I cannot cross the river, and impassable cliffs arise behind me. I hear the noise of great waters; I look and see a flood coming. The waters rise to our feet and then to our knees. ”

“ O’Sullivan testified that during the summer of 1906 he started from Split lake, on the Nelson, and made for the headwaters of Little Churchill river, going down the Little Churchill to the Big Churchill. The country between Split lake and Big lake is mostly swampy. The country about Big lake is a good loamy soil, with easy slopes surrounding the lakes. From Big lake to the Big Churchill the country is rocky and swampy, with a good deal of good loamy soil in places—a rich clay loam. The rock is mostly granite and gneiss. ”

“ In deserts where thirst is enthroned, and where the rocks and sand appeal to a pitiless sky for moisture, it was a savage trick to add the mockery of mirage.
The area multiplies the desolation. There is life only by the Nile. If a man were to leave the river, he might journey westward and find no human habitation, nor the smoke of a cooking fire, except the lonely tent of a Kabbabish Arab or the encampment of a trader's caravan, till he reached the coast-line of America. ”

“ Just above us was a bend in the river, and around this curve great floes of ice rushed, heaping up in huge masses as they swept down the furious current. All the lowlands that lay between Bismarck and the river were inundated, and the shore far in covered with blocks of ice that the force of the water had thrown there. Just across the river from us was a wretched little collection of huts, occupied by outlaws, into which the soldiers were decoyed to drink and gamble. ”

“ In May and June this prairie is completely covered with water. The Sumass river, from the rapid rise of the Fraser, reverses its course, and flows back into the lake instead of out of it. The lake fills, overflows, and completely floods the lower lands. On the subsidence of the waters, we pitched our tents on the edge of a lovely stream. Wildfowl were in abundance; the streams were alive with fish; the mules and horses revelling in grass kneedeep—we were in a second Eden! ”

“ Albertson's ferry we chose, and one car at a time rolled sedately on to a flatboat to be rowed to the opposite side of the river by a very young Charon in a very large straw hat.
We had groves to drive through, and little leafy roads like Surrey lanes, that looked innocent enough to lead nowhere, but somehow we managed to skip from valley to valley with a sensation almost of flying; and if the roads were like Surrey, the colour of the earth—when a bare place showed in a meadow—was rose-pink as Devon. Goldenrod, not yet in bloom, might have been planted purposely, in borders, mixed with sumach. ”

“ You have already heard of the little river Suippe, a tributary of the Aisne. Between the upper waters of this river and the Forest of the Argonne there is a chalk plain, dotted with plantations of firs and crossed by rolling downs. In many respects it resembles Salisbury Plain, and for many years has been put to the same use. Before the war it was the great training ground of French troops and the scene of their yearly manoeuvres. The plain is sparsely populated; scattered farms and straggling homesteads are few and far between, and lack of villages means lack of roads. ”

“ This latter place is located on a creek of the same name that goes tumbling through a deep cañon with vertical, serrated walls, and diversified by roaring cascades and far-leaping waterfalls. Returning to Deadwood, we took the Burlington and Missouri River Railroad south through another long stretch of turbulent scenery, of rushing creeks, darksome gorges, under the shadows of lofty mountains, and by curious formations. Custer Peak is only two or three miles east of the road, and it is the center of a riotous region of broken stone, each one a very mountain of itself. ”

“ Some brooklets of the Weald run southward to the English Channel, else, nearly the whole of Surrey drains into the valley of the Thames, a river to make the landscape fortune of any county. If ever its scenes have a fault, from the artist’s point of view, this may appear to be the absence of water; yet some of its noblest prospects are where the Mole and the Wey break through the sand or chalk ridges to reach the river plain. ”

“ From the shore of The Bend, opposite and above Auntie Sue's place, beyond the willows that fringe the water's edge, the low bottom-lands extend back three-quarters of a mile to the foot of a heavily timbered ridge, beyond which rise the higher hills. But directly across from Auntie Sue's house, this ridge curves sharply toward the stream; while less than a quarter of a mile below, a mighty mountain-arm is thrust out from a shoulder of Schoolhouse Hill, as if to bar the river's way. ”

“ At a distance of more than ninety miles nearer its source, this singular river still preserved its character, so strikingly, that it was impossible not to have recognised it in a moment. The same steep banks and lofty timber, the same deep reaches, alive with fish, were here visible as when we left it. A hope naturally arose to our minds, that if it was unchanged in other respects, it might have lost the saltness that rendered its waters unfit for use ”

“ This river differs from most in the colony, in having a belt of barren land of from a quarter of a mile to two miles in breadth in its immediate neighbourhood, and which is subject to overflow. This belt runs to the inland plains, where a small elevation checks the further progress of the flood. There is magnificent blue gum on both sides the river, but the right bank is evidently the most fertile, and I am mistaken greatly if there is not a beautiful country north of it. ”

“ Among and about the headstreams and tributaries of this mighty river lie the wide and fertile provinces of the Egyptian Soudan. Situated in the very centre of the land, these remote regions are on every side divided from the seas by five hundred miles of mountain, swamp, or desert. The great river is their only means of growth, their only channel of progress. It is by the Nile alone that their commerce can reach the outer markets, or European civilisation can penetrate the inner darkness. The Soudan is joined to Egypt by the Nile, as a diver is connected with the surface by his air-pipe. ”

“ Herds of waterbuck and buffalo come to the banks of the river, and lazily watch the steamers pass; and even elephant have been occasionally seen of late playing in their old haunts. A more suitable spot for a reserve could not have been selected. The Shiré and Ruo rivers to the south-west and east, and the highlands to the north, form natural boundaries; there is plenty of water and ample grazing at all times of the year. Every night one may hear the lions roaring. ”