Río Grande del Norte

“ The great central plains and prairies between the Appalachians and the Rocky Mountains are drained almost entirely by the Mississippi and its affluents, chief of which are the Ohio, Tennessee, Missouri, Arkansas, and Red river. The only other river of great importance flowing into the Gulf of Mexico is the great boundary river, the Rio Grande del Norte. ”

“ North of the 32nd parallel of latitude, the climate is colder, but the country is rolling and fertile, or, if broken, possessing wellwatered valleys, and destined eventually to be occupied for raising stock and grain. [12]
After the cession of Louisiana to France, and its purchase by the government of the United States, in 1803, it was claimed by the latter, that the Rio Grande del Norte formed the south-western boundary of the acquired territory. This claim was never acknowledged by Spain ”

“ So long as they keep men digging, so long she will thrive exceptionally and remain an important feeder to our railway.
The scenery along the Rio Grande, above Del Norte, is very fine, and has always the zest of human interest in the quaint ranches of the Mexican farmers, whose women and children flock out to see every train go by. Terraced steeps bound the river-valley where the farms are, at a little distance, on the right, while rounded pine-clad hills slope upward on the left. ”

“ Off to Del Norte and Wagon Wheel Gap! That meant a long run. We might have gone afoot across the Cunningham Pass and down the Alpine fastness of the Rio Grande’s birthplace almost as speedily as the train would take us, back to Durango, over the heights and glories of Toltec, down the mazy labyrinth of the Whiplash, and across the sheep pastures of San Luis. ”

“ As Oñate followed the course of the Rio Grande upward from below El Paso del Norte, and afterward branched off to almost every sedentary settlement in New Mexico and Arizona, the comparison of his diary with previous reports (those of the Coronado expedition included) is highly valuable, indeed indispensable. ”

“ Webster’s errors in geography, and of his false citation of authorities. It will then be seen that his geographical statements are worthy to be placed side by side with his classical. In the same letter, he says the extent of New Mexico, north and south, on the line of the Rio Grande, “can hardly be less than a thousand miles.” This makes a little more than fourteen degrees of latitude. Now, as its northern boundary is in 42°, its southern must be as low as 28°. This is four degrees below El Paso del Norte. Yet Mr. ”

“ Cotton is likewise one of the chief products, and a great many cattle are raised in the interior. The capital city has the same name, and is an interior town connected with the seaport, Cabedello, by rail.
Rio Grande do Norte is the most northeasterly state, and was the first land sighted by [44] Europeans on the shores of South America. Its area of twenty-two thousand square miles includes much arid territory where rain is very uncertain. Artesian wells have been tried without much success, and dry farming seems to be the only hope, although the droughts only come periodically. ”

“ The road over which we had hitherto been travelling, though it sometimes traverses upland ridges and undulating sections, runs generally near the border of the river, and for the most part in its immediate valley: but here it leaves the river and passes for nearly eighty miles over a table-plain to the eastward of a small ledge of mountains, whose western base is hugged {73} by the circuitous channel of the Rio del Norte. The craggy cliffs which project from these mountains render the eastern bank of the river altogether impassable. ”

“ One corps, spreading out in broad battalions, marches across the great prairies and winding through the gorges of the Rocky mountains, encamps on the shore of Peaceful sea: another, skirting the waves of the gulfs and fording the wide rivers of the South, plants its outposts on the Rio Grande; a third cuts its way through the trackless forests on the northern border till it strikes the lakes, and then crossing these inland seas or passing round them, pauses and breathes for a season in that great expanse known as the country of the Red River of the North. ”

“ He moved that, as our coast was now northward, so we might slant away north-west, that so, by crossing the country, we might perhaps meet with some other river that run into the Rio Grande northward, or down to the Gold Coast southward, and so both direct our way and shorten the labour; as also because, if any of the country was inhabited and fruitful, we should probably find it upon the shore of the rivers, where alone we could be furnished with provisions. ”

“ Passing on in a northerly direction, they came to a small river emptying into the Rio del Norte. This was a wild mountain stream, swollen into a foaming torrent, by melting snows and recent rains. But it must be crossed. It was perilous, for the bed was rocky and the current rapid. ”

“ The coast is one great sand beach, broken only at one point—that of the outlet of the two lakes, called the Rio Grande, which affords an entrance to navigable inland waters and several ports. There are two distinct river systems in Rio Grande do Sul—that of the, eastern slope draining to the tide-water lakes, and that of the La Plata basin draining westward to the Uruguay. ”

“ It is a mountainous country. The grand dividing ridges which separate the waters of the rio del Norte from those of California border it on the line of its western limits, and are covered, in some places, with eternal snows, which give a keenness to the air that could not be calculated upon or expected in a temperate zone. ”

“ There these sixty thousand persons reside. In the mountains on the right and left are streams which, obeying the natural tendency as tributaries, should flow into the Rio Grande, and which, in certain seasons, when rains are abundant, do, some of them, actually reach the Rio Grande; while the greater part always, and all for the greater part of the year, never reach an outlet to the sea, but are absorbed in the sands and desert plains of the country. ”

“ The Rio Grande makes a long bend where the boys left it, and almost returns upon itself after winding in and out for many miles. The land is swampy in places as the river approaches Painted Cave, but mountains show, too, and the country is without any population to speak of. Its general features are rugged.
As the lads alternated between rocky soil and swamp, they had little leisure for conversation. It took about all their strength and agility to make their way, leaping, now, over pools of water, now climbing over rocky elevations. ”

“ Poor as a scientific boundary, a river is not satisfactory even as a line of demarcation, because of its tendency to shift its bed in every level stretch of its course. A political boundary that follows a river, therefore, is often doomed to frequent surveys. The plantations on the meanders of the lower Mississippi are connected now with one, now with the other of the contiguous states, as the great stream straightens its course after the almost annual overflow.702 The Rio Grande has proved a troublesome and expensive boundary between the United States and Mexico. ”

“ It is at the north end of Le Petit Nord that St. Antoine is located.
The very character of the country and vegetation has changed. It is as if the great, forbidding fortress of St. John's Cape cut off the milder influences of southern Newfoundland, and left the northern peninsula a prey to ice and winds and fog. The people, too, have felt the influence of this discrimination of Nature. There is a line of demarcation between those who have been able to enjoy the benefits of the southern island, and those who have had to cope with the recurrent problems of the northland. ”

“ The physical geography of the Northwest shows a country so rich and varied in diversity of surface, of wide plains, smiling valleys, dense forests, broad rivers and rushing torrents, that the influence of the face of nature is inspiring. We look from some high mountain summit over the grand forests and valleys of our country, watching the clouds chase their shadows across the gorges and canyons, and, as the voices of the swaying pines, the murmur of a torrent or roar of some unseen waterfall falls upon our ear, our minds are full of thoughts that words fail to express. ”

“ I was in the society of gentlemen whose lives had been passed in all portions of the great north, on the frozen shores of Hudson’s Bay, in the mountain fastnesses of the Chipewyan range, or midst the savage solitudes that lie where, in long, low-lying capes, and ice-piled promontories, the shore of America stretches out to meet the waves of the Northern Ocean. ”

“ In short, in the minds of many, Western Nebraska, with its river, its climate, and its expanse of sterile soil, was of no value except to hold other portions of the earth together. But there lay the great undeveloped West, its prairies and beyond these its mountains, an inert expanse ready to be developed into vast productive states rich in soil and minerals. ”

“ Westward the sun hung like a red shield, close to the horizon, over vast reaches of prairie billowing to the sky-line in the tide of a boundless ocean. Such was the discovery of the Canadian Northwest.
Doubtless the weary gaze of the tired voyageurs turned longingly westward. Where was the Western Sea? Did it lie just beyond the horizon where skyline and prairie met, or did the trail of their quest run on—on—on—endlessly? The Assiniboine flows into the Red, the Red into Lake Winnipeg, the Lake into Hudson Bay. Plainly, Assiniboine Valley was not the way to the Western Sea. ”

“ The relation of the Provinces of the Lake and Prairie Plains to the rest of the United States is an important element in the significance of the Middle West. On the north lies the similar region of Canada: the Great Lakes are in the center of the whole eastern and more thickly settled half of North America, and they bind the Canadian and Middle Western people together. On the south, the provinces meet the apex of that of the Gulf Plains, and the Mississippi unites them. To the west, they merge gradually into the Great Plains ”

“ The Northern and Westward Part of America is also mountainous, and high Ridges of Mountains were seen from the Head of Wager Bay on the opposite Shore of what appeared to be a Lake; therefore there must be Lakes and Seas to Westward, Reservoirs for the melting Snows and Rains, also some Outlet or Channel to carry off the great Quantities of Ice also formed in those Parts; and with which Barnarda's Account is consistent, and the greatest Reservoir and Discharge seems to be to the Northward by that North-east Part of the Tartarian Sea. ”

“ Hundreds upon hundreds of miles that endless trail went winding to the farthest North-west. No human being had ever trod its lengths before, though Indians or a stray Hudson's Bay Company man had made journeys over part of it during the years that have passed since Prince Rupert sent his adventurers to dot that northern land with posts and forts, and trace fine arteries of civilisation through the wastes. ”

“ The navigation of the Rio Grande is capable of great improvement, and it is ascertained that there is an abundance of coal on its banks. These banks will, some day, be crowded with towns and cities, and their fertile soil will support as large a population as the Nile. ”

“ It is certainly a wonderfully fascinating coast, beautifully green and wooded in the south, and becoming bleaker and barer the farther north one travels. But the bare ruggedness and naked strength of the north have perhaps the deeper appeal. To those who have to sail its waters and wrest a living from the harvest of the sea, this must be a cruel shore, with its dangers from rocks and icebergs and fog, and insufficient lighting and charting. ”

“ Behind him all lines of transportation lead eastward to the cities of the coast. Before him lies the giant valley where the Father of Waters throws out his two splendid arms, the Ohio and the Missouri, one reaching to the Alleghanies and the other to the Rockies. Northward, at the end of the Erie Canal, lies the empire of the Great Lakes, inland seas that wash the shores of a Northland having a coastline longer than that of the Atlantic from Maine to Mexico. ”

“ The North Foreland—Ramsgate—Deal—Dover—Hythe, and some other Cinque Ports The great headland, famous as the North Foreland, dazzling white on a bright summer’s day, and grey when the weather is cloudy; capped with green turf which is by turns, according to the season, the greenest and the least green in England, is familiar to all who have gone down Channel from the Thames estuary, and to many who have only crossed it. ”

“ The North River is entirely healthy, for it lies much higher up than the South River, that is further to the north, and although it is nearer the sea than where they live in Maryland and on the South River, it is nevertheless more wholesome, which shows that it is not the air of the sea which causes the insalubrity, but other reasons which I will not consider at present. ”

“ I found, in a description of the river bank of the Rio Grande below Laredo, that 41 entire hills are to be seen, composed almost wholly of what appears to be a collection of large sea oyster-shells." I presume, therefore, that the same cretaceous formation extends in this direction higher up on the Rio Grande. ”

“ Since the transfer of the northwest from the Hudson’s Bay Company to the Dominion Government, a vast amount of reliable information regarding the great northland has been obtained by Canadian Government explorers, generally engineers reconnoitring in advance of railway construction, members of the staff of the Geological Survey of Canada, or expeditions despatched to various defined areas by the Department of the Interior for the express purpose of investigating their natural resources and determining their suitability for agricultural or industrial developments. ”