Scarpe River

“ But now the captive fish found its strength failing. Seeking a refuge, it began to drag the raft toward the shore. As they did not wish to land in this place the boy cut the rope with his pocket-knife and set the fish free, just in time to prevent the raft from grounding.315
316 The next time the river backed up the Scarecrow managed to seize the branch of a tree that overhung the water and they all assisted him to hold fast and prevent the raft from being carried backward. ”

“ In the course of the day the little squadron arrived at the confluence of Henry and Mad Rivers, which, thus united, swelled into a beautiful stream of a light pea-green color, navigable for boats of any size, and which, from the place of junction, took the name of Snake River, a stream doomed to be the scene of much disaster to the travellers. The banks were here and there fringed with willow thickets and small cotton-wood trees. ”

“ Emptying into the Scaroon River, just below the lake, is a superb mountain stream, known as Trout Brook. It is thirty feet wide, twelve miles long, and comes rushing down the mountains, forming a thousand waterfalls and pools, and filling its narrow valley with an everlasting roar of music. Not only is it distinguished for the quality and number of its trout, but it possesses one attraction which will pay the tourist for the weary tramp he must undergo to explore its remote recesses. ”

“ The beautiful creek that now furnishes the water for several thousand acres of the great Clarkston project, a stream of much picturesque beauty as it makes its way, swiftly indeed, but with apparent serenity and general decorum through the lower end of the town into Snake River, has taken the liberty on several occasions to gather up reinforcements from the plains through which its tributaries have worn their way, and has come sweeping down the steep declivities in torrents that threatened to tear out everything in its course. ”

“ The Zab, only fordable at certain seasons, is there a fast-flowing dark green river, fully sixty yards wide, deep enough to take the footmen up to their waists, and strong enough to make them stagger, with a lawn bright with autumnal foliage below the savage and lofty mountains on its right bank. ”

“ They had intended to proceed up the banks of Gun Creek, a stream which flows into Snake River from the west; but were assured by the natives that the route in that direction was impracticable. The latter advised them to keep along Snake River, where they would not be impeded by the snow. ”

“ It is deep, and abounds in fish, particularly in salmon trout, common trout, carp, and a small, oily fish, very delicious, and tasting like the smelt. The Spokan river rises in the lake, and crosses the whole plain of the Cœur d'Alènes. The valley [Pg 366] that borders above the lake is from four to five miles wide, exceedingly fertile, and the soil from ten to fifteen feet deep. Every spring, at the melting of the snow, it is subject to inundations, which scarcely ever last longer than four or five days; at the same time augmenting, as in Egypt, the fertility of the soil. ”

“ They are very high, but in our eyes, so much accustomed of late to immense height, do not excite much surprise. Still farther astern is the small isle of Scarba, which, as we see it, seems to be a single hill. In the passage or sound between Scarba and the extremity of Jura, is a terrible run of tide, which, contending with the sunk rocks and islets of that foul channel, occasions the succession of whirlpools called the Gulf of Corrievreckan. Seen at this distance, we cannot judge of its terrors. ”

“ And when long after a silvery expanse shone ahead of him, he did not realize for the moment that his aimless wanderings had 301 brought him to Snake River. He stumbled on till he reached the edge of the stream and saw in the black shadow of the trees a dugout half filled with water. For the first time in his night of wandering, a vague purpose took shape in his throbbing brain.
This was Snake River. And here was his boat awaiting him. He would take it and drift down the stream, meeting the men in the morning. ”

“ Here it is peaceful, but to the south of Arras it becomes sufficiently broad to give its name to the valley through which the Hun tried to drive last spring, when the waters of the Scarpe ran scarlet. The houses of the village stand at irregular intervals, divided from the road by a strip of common upon which geese graze. One reaches the common by little bridges which cross the Scarpe, which wanders singing, paralleling the highway. Nothing has been marred by shell-fire ”

“ Reaching the overflowed country, I have to take to the trestle-work and begin the tedious process of trundling along that aggravating roadway, where, to the music of rushing waters, I have to step from tie to tie, and bump, bump, bump, my machine along for six weary miles. The Sacramento River is the outlet for the tremendous volumes of water caused every spring by the melting snows on the Sierra Nevada Mountains, and these long stretches of open trestle have been found necessary to allow the water to pass beneath. ”

“ On the whole, Concord River is no great favorite of mine; but I am glad to have any river at all so near at hand, it being just at the bottom of our orchard. Neither is it without a degree and kind of picturesqueness, both in its nearness and in the distance, when a blue gleam from its surface, among the green meadows and woods, seems like an open eye in Earth's countenance. Pleasant it is, too, to behold a little flat-bottomed skiff gliding over its bosom, which yields lazily to the stroke of the paddle, and allows the boat to go against its current almost as freely as with it. ”

“ From Ball's Hill to Billerica meeting-house, the river was still twice as broad as in Concord, a deep, dark, and dead stream, flowing between gentle hills and sometimes cliffs, and well wooded all the way. It was a long woodland lake bordered with willows. For long reaches we could see neither house nor cultivated field, nor any sign of the vicinity of man. ”

“ Fig. 185 shows the changes recorded in the channel of the river at this point during the year 1883. It shows that the scour-and-fill during this year amounted to almost 40 feet. All 196streams similarly situated do a like work. The material thus eroded is shifted down-stream, some of it for short distances only, and some of it to the sea. Even an aggrading stream therefore is not without erosive activity; it is a stream whose fill exceeds its scour, not one which has ceased to erode. ”

“ A few miles from the head of it we came to the Skagway river or creek, 120 miles from Juneau, and here, amongst a wilderness of trees, mountains, and mud flats, a mere foothold in the snow-clad granite coast-range, were a handful of Indian rancheries and a few log shanties and some tents. There is a great rise and fall in the tides at Skagway. We had to wait some time ere the one boat belonging to the Rustler could land us and our stuff on the rock-strewn muddy beach. No one from the shore lent a hand. There was a rough wharf, it is true, in course of construction. ”

“ August 14.—This morning, three miles over a very rough, hilly road, brought us to Snake river, where we see it the last time on our route. Here we left it again and traveled five miles over a ridge and down a ravine to Burnt river. This is a small stream, being about one rod wide and about three inches deep. The water is good and cool, the banks are lined with low brush; here the mountains are very high. This evening we traveled up this stream, which is in a deep gorge, through which the stream runs with rapid fall. ”

“ Nine miles below this, a ledge of the semi-crystalline limestone rock crosses the entire channel, lifting itself five feet above the bed of the stream. Over this the Fox River throws itself by an abrupt cascade. Down this shelf of rock, the canoes, previously lightened of their burden, are lifted by the men. It was sometime after dark when we reached and encamped on the north shore, at the foot of this cascade, which bears the name of Konamik. ”

“ If the geological survey was correct, the basin would be a good ten feet below the water-bearing gravel strata that should be carrying the bulk of the lost water from the ruptured underground Spokima Reservoir fifteen miles upstream. The river bed lay in a slight natural fault and the water should follow beneath the old river bed without too much side loss.
In a half hour the six units had carved out a cavern in the solid rock fifty feet high and extending six hundred feet upstream from the vertical bore. ”

“ Here the Tees, in a succession of violent cascades, makes a descent, as we have seen, of two hundred feet. At High Force it falls by only seventy-five feet; but, whereas the lonelier cataract is a long and broken slope, the water at High Force falls with plummet-like directness, in a vast broad sheet when the river is in flood, in two straight white columns when the floods are subsidin [Pg 200] g, and in a single glittering fall when the river is at its normal height. Here the contrast between the Yorkshire and the Durham side of the Tees first makes itself decisively felt. ”

“ If we imagine rafts, with horses and oxen tied to the railings, trying to run the whirlpool below Niagara, we shall have some conception of what this meant.
The canoes sheered out of the way and the rafts were unmoored. The Scarborough raft, with men from Whitby and Scarborough, near Toronto, swirled out to midstream on the afternoon of the 1st of September. 'Poor, poor white men,' sighed the Indians; 'no more see white men' ”

“ At Lemington are the Steep Falls, of twenty feet. At Buxton are Salmon Falls, of thirty feet; and ten miles below we come to Saco Falls, where the river is divided by Indian Island, containing thirty acres, and on each side the river tumbles over a precipice of rocks forty-two feet high, and disappears amid the waves of the Atlantic. From the east side of the above-named island, which is fertile and pleasant, the appearance of these falls is majestic.
This river is easily affected by freshets. At such times the water rises ten feet, and sometimes it has risen twenty-five feet ”

“ The mountains become less precipitous and the cañon widens to a valley, until at last the trail comes out at a clearing where the Cascade River joins the Skagit. At this point, known as Marble Mountain, there is a ferry, also a store and several other buildings. The cleared fields seem a relief after many miles of dense forest, but such openings are infrequent, for few settlers have yet pushed far into the forests of the Skagit valley. To make a clearing of any size, tear out the stumps, and prepare the land for cultivation, requires many years of hard labor. ”

“ Leaving entirely the Snake river, which is said henceforth to pursue its way through canons, amidst rocky and impracticable mountains, where there is no possibility of traveling with animals, we ascended a long and steep hill; and crossing the dividing ridge, came down into the valley of Burnt river, which here looks like a hole among the hills. The average breadth of the stream here is thirty feet; it is well fringed with the usual small timber; and the soil in the bottoms is good, with better grass than we had lately been accustomed to see. ”

“ The grass became less abundant, and as we advanced, a great portion of the country became quite barren. At one hundred miles from the Hot Pools, we came to and crossed the Raft River, which empties into Snake River, twenty three miles below the American Falls. Thence we crossed the main range of mountains, South of the Valley of Snake River, through a large, deep gap, and at thirty miles came to the river, five miles below the junction of the Portneiff ”

“ The fountains of this river are so springy that "the water never freezes so as to prevent or impede operations," nor are they troubled with droughts; the current is ever-living.
At Sacarappa, on the Presumpscot, there are six saws for long lumber, two shingle and two lath machines. At Great Falls there are four saws, also four more a few miles up the river, and four shingle and four lath machines. Above Sebago Pond there are also four more saw-mills, the produce of which finds a domestic market in the neighboring towns. ”

“ Started at 1 o’clock P.M. and traveled up the stream 11 miles and camped. Road very dry and extremely dusty. Raft River is a tributary of Snake River, which is one of the principal forks of the Columbia.
Finding good grass three or four feet high in this valley, and our stock being in poor condition for traveling, we concluded to remain here until Monday morning. A few of our mules and horses have been left behind, they having become completely worn out or exhausted. ”

“ For the principal facts involved in the view given of the Presumpscot and its lumbering interests, I am mainly indebted to the kindness of E. Clarke, M.D., of Portland, Maine.
The next considerable river is Saco, which rises among the White Mountains of New Hampshire, at the notch near where the Ammonoosuc River takes its rise. The Saco, from its source to the Atlantic Ocean, into which it empties, is about one hundred and forty miles in length, its current rapid, and waters clear. In common with many other rivers, some portion of it is exceedingly crooked. ”

“ The Skagit River, from its source to its mouth, takes the traveller through varying climates and life zones, from the barren crest where the miner is the only inhabitant, down through forests where the lumberman is busy, until it leaves him upon the rich meadows of its delta. ”