Vaal River

“ After rushing on their way from the south in numerous rapids, the waters of the Vaal here subside into a broad muddy channel, and flow peacefully on to the mouth of the Harts River, which comes from the north-east. Just before the streams unite, the Vaal makes a sudden turn to the west, and so flows on for a little distance, when it bends away in a south-south-west direction. Where it makes this last bend, the bank of the river is swampy and overgrown by trees, and is the haunt of wild cats, lynxes, and other beasts of prey, besides herds of wild swine. ”

“ Rising up from the Vaal river to the height of about 500 feet the land ceases to be hilly and becomes a vast rolling plain for many miles, without a single tree, and almost without a single enclosure. ”

“ While men were busily engaged in scraping away among the pebbles of the Vaal River, prospecting was going on some twenty miles southward. The first dry diggings struck were those of Du Toit’s Pan in the middle of 1870, which were worked chiefly by the Dutch, who at that time never thought of testing the ground to a greater depth than eighteen inches or two feet, and who, when they came upon calcareous tufa, abandoned their operations. ”

“ The Territory of the South African Republic will embrace the land lying between the following boundaries, to wit:
Beginning from the point where the north-eastern boundary line of Griqualand West meets the Vaal River, up the course of the Vaal River to the point of junction with it of the Klip River; thence up the course of the Klip River to the point of junction with it of the stream called Gansvlei; thence up the Gansvlei stream to its source in the Drakensberg; thence to a beacon in the boundary of Natal, situated immediately opposite and close to the source of the Gansvlei stream ”

“ The river when in flood, at which time it has a depth of 40 ft., scours a channel through the bar, but the Orange is at all times inaccessible to sea-going vessels. Above the bar it is navigable by small vessels for 30 or 40 m. In the neighbourhood of the Vaal confluence, where the river passes through alluvial land, and at some other places, the waters of the Orange are used, and are capable of being much more largely used, for irrigation purposes. ”

“ Except for the Koranna men, David and Gert, there was no rest to be had; but they were both utterly regardless of the rain-pools in which they were reclining, and slept on soundly till the morning.
The Free State shore of the Vaal is elevated; the parts where it is not entirely wooded being scantily dotted with mimosas. Many of the well-to-do farmers, resident on the south of the river, have purchased as much as 3000 acres of land hereabouts, for the purpose of grazing their cattle during the dry season. ”

“ Throughout its whole course it receives numerous affluents on both sides, such as the Shasha and Nuanetsi from the north, the Marico, Nyl, Limvuba, Lipalule, and others from Transvaal, of which region it drains fully 95,000 square miles. With the exception of a few tracts watered by the headstreams of the Buffalo (Tugela) , Mvolozi, Usutu, and Umcomati (King George) , flowing in independent channels eastwards to the Indian Ocean, all the rest of Transvaal is drained by the Vaal westwards to the Orange and Atlantic. ”

“ Brown with the gleanings of tens of thousands of square miles of loamy hill and dale swept by furious thunderstorms, clogged with the detritus gathered from flooded flat and spate-ravaged kloof, foul with the rubbish from many a distant mining camp on the banks of its tributary, the Vaal, the torrent swept irresistibly on with a growling roar, the might of which could not be realised without receding for some distance from the bank. ”

“ The width of the Nile Valley in the marsh country is considerable, in places being as much as eight or nine miles from high land to high land. Through and across this dreary expanse of swamp the river wanders, at times approaching one bank and then again the other. It rarely touches either, but crosses the marshes backwards and forwards in an exasperating succession of loops and twists. On both sides of the valley the dry land is marked by a belt of thorny bush, varying in width from a few hundred yards to several miles. ”

“ Throughout this portion of the Nile Valley the river scenery presents a series of beautiful pictures. The mountains bar the stream on the west, rising almost vertically, with scarred and scarped faces, like a Titanic wall. To the east low, wooded hills run parallel to the river—at times, little more than stony ridges, but occasionally rising some hundred feet above the water. ”

“ Where now were only barren stretches would be great sheets of water or broad and fertile plains covered with waving grass. A week passed and at heart I was utterly discouraged, but Vail never grew despondent. But for him I should have abandoned the quest. His courage never faltered, it was only a question of time and we would succeed. In two weeks nature drove us from the field, every stream and lagoon in the hills dried up and at our camp the water was running very low. ”

“ Every limb was plied, every nerve strained, to force a way through the impetuous current; every man exerted himself to the utmost; but the river rushed along with irresistible violence, and instead of making way towards the shore, they saw themselves hurried down by the stream towards the sea, where inevitable death awaited them. Meanwhile Le Vaillant perceived with dismay that their strength began to fail them. ”

“ When the vallies are of considerable extent, they are almost invariably occupied by a lake, the proportion of water in this primitive district being very great; from the top of the highest hill on the Hill River, which has not a greater altitude than six hundred feet, thirty-six lakes are said to be visible. The small elevation of the chain may be inferred from an examination of the map, which shows that it is crossed by several rivers, that rise in the Rocky Mountains, the most considerable of which are the Churchill and the Saskatchewan, or Nelson River. ”

“ In Pleistocene times drainage down the Nile Valley appears to have become definitely established and probably the river in the lower part of its course eventually washed up against and broke down the separating barrier of gravel between the Fayûm and the Nile Valley, so that part of its waters obtained access to the depression, formed a lake on the lowest part, and gradually rose until the whole basin, up to the level of the channel connecting it with the Nile Valley, became filled. ”

“ We rode down to the bend of the Valley River over a stretch of sandy land pre-empted by the cinque-foil and the running brier, the country of the woodcock and the eccentric kildee. We could hear the low, sullen roar of the river sweeping north around this big bend, long before we came to it. Under the stars there is no greater voice of power. We rode side by side in the deepening twilight, making huge shadows on the crunching sand. ”

“ Here is the winding Wallace River, and here, too, are fifty tiny streams, waterfalls and brooks. Some are dashing headlong and sparkling in the sun; others, with white foam shaded to a cream by the overhanging trees, have inner depths that the eye cannot fathom until accustomed to the narrow limits of light and shade. ”

“ Nearly all the tributaries of the two big rivers flow from the snow banks and the canons of the Blue Mountains. Though conveying in the aggregate during the flood season an immense volume, the tributaries are too swift for navigation. They supply abundant water for irrigation where needed, and each is a superb trout stream. The largest, the Grande Ronde, is in truth an Oregon river, for its main supplies come from the Grande Ronde and Wallowa valleys, but it crosses the corner of Asotin County and enters Snake River within that scenic country. ”

“ Neither Jud nor the other brother was anywhere in sight. I looked up at the steel cable above the man's head. It ended twenty feet away in the water.
I arose in the stirrups and searched the bank for the boat. It was gone. The Valley River ran full, a quarter of a mile of glistening yellow water, and no way across it but the way of the bass or the way of the heron.
The human mind has caves into which it can crawl, pits where it hides itself when it wishes to escape; dark holes leading back under the crags of the abyss. ”

“ The only important affluent of the Middle Orange is the Vaal, or "Gray," one of whose upper branches, the Namagari, has its source, like the Caledon, on the Potong plateau. But its farthest headstream takes its rise on the uplands which skirt the seaboard of the Indian Ocean to the south of Lourenço Marques. Were the question to be decided by the length of their several courses, of all these affluents the Vaal would have to be regarded as the true mainstream. But its valley to a great extent traverses arid plains or dried-up lacustrine beds belonging to a former geological epoch ”

“ One tertiary vale, one cretaceous ridge, one or more vales in clay, alternating with as many ridges of oolite, are crossed on each of these roads in the same order of succession. These parallel vales are frequently, though not always, filled for parts of their length by great rivers, like the Isis or the Thames; and investigation easily shows that the hollows are not the result of fluviatile action, but of some earlier and greater force of nature, which excavated the wide vale in which the river now finds a narrow channel. ”

“ Three only of these I saw, for before the dim day had well run half its course, sudden blackness of night was upon us, and with it one of those tempests, of which the winter of this semi-polar sea is, throughout, an ever-varying succession. During the haggard and dolorous crepuscule of the next brief day, the rain did not cease; but before darkness had quite supervened, my helmsman, who talked continuously to a mate of seal-maidens, and waterhorses, and grulies, paused to point to a mound of gloomier grey in the weather-bow, which was, he assured me, Vaila. ”

“ The high veldt of the Transvaal has an average height of 5000 feet above sea-level. It is a vast open grass country with rocky ridges rising a few hundred feet above the ordinary level. A magnificent stock country, and rich in coal, iron, and gold. On the eastern line, the Central South African line connects with the Portuguese line at Komati Poort, and passes up the Elands River Valley already described. From Waterval Boven the railway continues to ascend to the summit of the high veldt at Bergendal, near Belfast. ”

“ The mountain, on the eastern side of the vale is clothed with oak and ash trees; but, upon the west, there is no foliage. The river rushes with great impetuosity after a flood, from its mountain fall, into the Menai straits, winding through the glen, and encircling several rocky islets in its course. The fall is about a mile and a half up the stream, and, at the extremity of the vale, a convex mountain rises, down which it leaps, from a height of about sixty feet; and there is said to be a large stone here, on which the army of Llewellyn sharpened their spears and arrows ”

“ The endless variety in the sections of the alluvium of the valley of the Somme, may be ascribed to the frequent silting up of the main stream and its tributaries during different stages of the excavation of the valley, probably also during changes in the level of the land. As a rule, when a river attacks and undermines one bank, it throws down gravel and sand on the opposite side of its channel, which is growing somewhere shallower, and is soon destined to be raised so high as to form an addition to the alluvial plain, and to be only occasionally inundated. ”

“ On the spot where we stand the past, the present and the future join hands. Here passed unknown generations of aborigines on the way from the Walla Walla Valley to ascend or descend the Great River, to pass in to the Yakima country, or to move in either direction to the berry patches or hunting grounds of the great mountains; here the exploring expedition of Lewis and Clark paused to view the vast expanse of prairie before committing themselves to what they supposed to be the lower river ”

“ It was suggested that remains of these streams were to be seen in the side ravines, or wadis, of the Nile valley, which run up from the low desert on the river level into the hills on either hand. These wadis undoubtedly show extensive traces of strong water action; they curve and twist as the streams found their easiest way to the level through the softer strata, they are heaped up with great water-worn boulders, they are hollowed out where waterfalls once fell. ”

“ When the land stood 70 or 80 feet higher than it does now, the country must have looked very different. The rivers then traversed the chalk downs through V-shaped comparatively narrow valleys; but these valleys opened out in their upper reaches, where they crossed the Gault and Weald Clay. If we could lay bare the true floor of the valley, we should see however that there is always a steady and fairly regular fall seaward, just as there is in the part of its course which lies above the influence of the submergence, which is felt for some 10 or 12 miles from the sea. ”

“ Leaving Naliele, amid abundance of good wishes for the success of our expedition, and hopes that we might return accompanied with white traders, we began again our ascent of the river. It was now beginning to rise, though the rains had but just commenced in the valley. The banks are low, but cleanly cut, and seldom sloping. At low water they are from four to eight feet high, and make the river always assume very much the aspect of a canal. They are in some parts of whitish, tenacious clay, with strata of black clay intermixed, and black loam in sand, or pure sand stratified. ”