Tormes River

“ For the greater part of its length the canyon of the Tourmaline, up which the two railroads were racing, each straining every nerve to be the first to reach the newly opened gold district at the headwaters of the river, was a water-cut channel through the mountains with beetling cliffs or steep wooded slopes for its boundaries. But at this particular point some prehistoric convulsion of nature had opened a half-mile gap in the south wall, and through this broad gap, coming down from the high shoulder of Bull Peak, poured the vast river of disintegrated shale. ”

“ From Ball's Hill to Billerica meeting-house the river is a noble stream of water, flowing between gentle hills and occasional cliffs, and well wooded all the way. It can hardly be said to flow at all, but rests in the lap of the hills like a quiet lake. The boatmen call it a dead stream. For many long reaches you can see nothing to indicate that men inhabit its banks. [10] Nature seems to hold a sabbath herself to-day,—a still warm sun on river and wood, and not breeze enough to ruffle the water. Cattle stand up to their bellies in the river, and you think Rembrandt should be here. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Unfitted to some extent for the purposes of commerce by the sand-bar at its mouth, see how this river was devoted from the first to the service of manufactures. Issuing from the iron region of Franconia, and flowing through still uncut forests, by inexhaustible ledges of granite, with Squam, and Winnipiseogee, and Newfound, and Massabesic Lakes for its mill-ponds, it falls over a succession of natural dams, where it has been offering its privileges in vain for ages, until at last the Yankee race came to improve them. ”

“ The first appearance of the Tamar river is not very inviting to the seaman. A rapid stream, thrown out of its course, hemmed in by numerous reefs, and passing over a bottom so uneven as to cause a change in the soundings from 12 to 26, and then 18 fathoms, with a ripple or line of broken water across the mouth renders it impossible in strong North-West winds for a stranger to detect the channels, and raises so much sea that the pilots cannot reach the vessels that arrive off the mouth. ”

“ To the foremen Thorpe assigned their tasks, calling them to him one by one, as a general calls his aids.
“Moloney,” said he to the big Irishman, “take your crew and break that jam. Then scatter your men down to within a mile of the pond at Dam Two, and see that the river runs clear. You can tent for a day or so at West Bend or some other point about half way down; and after that you had better camp at the dam. Just as soon as you get logs enough in the pond, start to sluicing them through the dam. You won't need more than four men there, if you keep a good head. ”

“ The navigation of this river for large vessels is not easy, in consequence of a bar and other hindrances. The Tamar is formed by the union of two smaller streams, named the North Esk, and South Esk, and at Launceston, the distance from the sea is about forty miles. Towards its mouth, the land adjoining this stream is barren and sandy, but within a few miles this kind of soil is succeeded by rich level marshes, and beautiful slopes of moderately wooded and rich pasture country rising up behind these. ”

“ When left to ourselves we sate down on the hillside, and looked with delight into the deep vale below, which was exceedingly green, not regularly fenced or cultivated, but the level area scattered over with bushes and trees, and through that level ground glided a glassy river, not in serpentine windings, but in direct turnings backwards and forwards, and then flowed into the head of the Lake of Tummel ”

“ From its four windows he could look down on the little bridge and brown rock dam above with its plunging waterfall, and beyond that the widespread lake, dotted with islands, reed and alder fringed, that narrowed again into Little River farther on.
“It’s queer,” Doris said once, when winter was half over. “Nothing ever really looks dead up here. Even with the grass and leaves all dried up, the trees and earth look kind of reddish, you know what I mean, Mother, warm like.” ”

“ While on the drive, men work fourteen hours a day, up to their waists in water filled with floating ice.
On the Ossawinamakee, as has been stated, three dams had been erected to simplify the process of driving. When the logs were in right distribution, the gates were raised, and the proper head of water floated them down.
Now the river being navigable, Thorpe was possessed of certain rights on it. Technically he was entitled to a normal head of water, whenever he needed it; or a special head, according to agreement with the parties owning the dam. ”

“ The Tamar, with its forest-clad declivities, its rocks and crags and cliffs, its long reaches of shining water fringed with deep green meadows and woodland, is essentially a river for the man with leisure. In the opinion of those who have seen both, the scenery far surpasses that of the belauded Dart. The production of arsenic has discoloured the water in parts, as the mine shafts have destroyed the sylvan charm of the shore, but this is only for a short distance above New Bridge, the New Bridge over which Essex so foolishly led his troops in 1644. ”

“ Every one of these rivers makes up in some way for the deficiencies of its earlier and fresh-water period by the manner of its approach to the sea. In the case of the Rother, for instance, though the inland valleys it flows through are in themselves not unpleasing, it is difficult to warm towards a river that has every characteristic of a canal, contracting eventually into a respectable ditch. ”

“ It is true that the cañon valley of the North Thompson lies open, but to follow this outlet, is to face still more imposing obstacles where the Thompson River unites with the Frazer at Lytton, some 250 miles nearer to the south-west; here, along the Frazer, the Cascade Mountains lift their rugged heads, and the river for full sixty miles flows at the bottom of a vast angle cut by nature through the heart of the mountains, whose steep sides rise abruptly from the water’s edge: in many places a wall of rock. ”

“ The woods abound with the finest kind of untouched timber; the land is fertile in the extreme; and the rivers, streams, and lakes abound with fish. In short, had the Trent Canal been finished, instead of the miserable and decaying timber-slides, which now encumber that noble river, another million of inhabitants would, in ten years more, have filled up the forests, which are now only penetrated by the Indian or the seeker after timber. ”

“ Orde set his men to digging a channel through this bank. It was no slight job, from one point of view, as the slope down into the swamp began only at a point forty or fifty feet inland; but on the other hand the earth was soft and free from rocks. When completed the channel gave passage to a rather feeble streamlet from the outer fringe of the river. The men were puzzled, but Orde, by the strange freak of his otherwise frank and open nature, as usual told nothing of his plans, even to Tom North.
“He can't expect to turn that river,” said Tim Nolan, who was once more with the crew. ”

“ Because of this spreading habit of the stream, the few villages along the way are planted on the higher land at the base of the bluffs, or on an occasional sandy pocket-plateau 245 which the river, as in ages past it has worn its bed to lower levels, has left high and dry above present overflows. Some of these towns, in their fear of floods, are situated two or three miles back from the water highway; others, where the channel chances to closely hug a line of bluffs, are directly abutting the river, which is crossed at such points by either a ferry or a toll-bridge. ”

“ That Congress did not act arbitrarily in determining that 'for the purposes of navigation of said waters and the waters connected therewith,' the whole flow of the stream should be devoted exclusively to that end, is most evident when we consider the character of this stream and its relation to the whole problem of lake navigation. The river St. Marys is the only outlet for the waters of Lake Superior. The stretch of water called the falls and rapids of the river is about 3,000 feet long, and from bank to bank has a width of about 4,000 feet. ”

“ If we don’t get across now while we’ve a chance, Heaven only knows when we shall. The river’s ‘down’ as it has never been before, and all along the road we have heard nothing but how it’s coming down harder. Every blessed one of the bridges will go, and we shall be stuck on this side, it may be for weeks.”
Thorman made no reply, but sat on his horse scowling ferociously at the flood in front of them.
The spot was a drift on the Great Fish River crossed by an important main road which was one of the principal lines of transport up-country. ”

“ 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. ”

“ To build a strong dam of stones and cement—say, 60 feet high—in the pass before referred to, and by submerging about 60,000 acres of land now subject to overflow and of little comparative value, create a vast lake 15 miles long by 7 wide, with a probable storage capacity of 4,000,000,000 cubic yards of water; place gates on each side of the river in the dam at the 50-foot level for waste-weirs and irrigating canals to supply each side of the river and keep up a flow in its bed which would bring the water in the canals 70 feet above the streets in the cities of El Paso and Juarez, respectively. ”

“ Even overnight, even in a few short hours, a stream has been known to swell from sudden rains or snow, bringing the water with a rush down steep mountain sides and carrying with it the logs that were left strewn on the slopes or near the bank. Men work with feverish haste to roll the logs into the stream. The whole is swept into the dam, the trigger is released at the right moment and the rush of water with its freight of logs sweeps through the open gate with a mighty roar, carrying its cargo for miles on down to the river. ”

“ Ordinary floods so completely change the channel of the river, and make such devastation in its bed, that it is hardly to be recognised when the water subsides, so that unless the banks are high, and the soil of which they may be composed stiff enough to resist the impetuosity of the stream, I fear no bridge across the Torrens will be permanently safe. ”

“ There is a fall of one hundred and thirty feet in its course of forty miles, and that means numerous cascades and rapids. But the fact of prime importance is that this river is the home of big trout; not only large, but pugnacious. They are the Sullivans—beg pardon, I mean the Johnsons—of the Salmo Fontinalis family.
But this is getting ahead of my story. We are just starting up the river. Let me introduce you to our four guides: Aleck De La Ronde, Joe Kejigos, Vincent Ashawikyegulap and Zavier Misak. They are Ojibway Indians. ”

“ I got no affidavit with the story; but local “stock” yarns are always worth preserving on account of their colour.
There were a number of big black rocks where the river began its bend to the west, but the channel to the right was not hard to follow. Neither did Bull Run Rapids, a few miles farther down, offer any difficulties. I followed the steamer channel as having the swiftest current, but could have passed without trouble on either side of it in much quieter water. Brown and terra-cotta-tinged cliffs reared higher and higher to left and right, encroaching closely on the river. ”

“ Indians have been hauling rock all winter for the dam. The canal, when completed, will be ten or fifteen miles long and will irrigate about 5,000 acres of the Milk river valley lands south of the river. These lands will grow excellent crops of grain and hay.
“A new enterprise that will be commenced this summer (1899) is a big reservoir on Warm Springs creek in the Little Rockies. This reservoir will cover 160 acres of land and will have an average depth of eighteen feet. It is designed to furnish a supply of water for irrigating purposes in the southern part of the reservation. ”

“ Between the lake and Brito one small stream is taken into the canal by a receiving weir. The river Tola and several small streams coming from the north are to be passed under the canal, and along its lower portion there will be ditches to intercept the surface drainage, which is inconsiderable, and convey it to the sea. ”

“ In its northern part a river called the Tarim flows from west to east. It is formed by the Yarkand-darya and the Khotan-darya on the south, and receives other affluents along its course, for water streams down from the snowfields and glaciers of the wreath of mountains enclosing Eastern Turkestan. The head-waters of the Tarim leap merrily down through narrow valleys among the mountains, but the great river is doomed never to reach the sea. It terminates and is lost in a desert lake named Lop-nor. ”