Washita River

“ At the time this immense cypress swamp is flooded, it exhibits the appearance of a vast number of large trees, standing in a lake, or a bay of the sea. The name of black river, at the distance of sixty miles, is changed, and it is then called the Washata river. Here the course of the river tends to the westward, and the land becomes sufficiently high to admit of cultivation near the bank of the river. At the mouth of the Washata, and near lake Cattahoola, is a small settlement, where the settlers have raised an embankment to prevent inundation when the water is high. ”

“ The dark race is, howev [Pg 154] er, fast disappearing from its banks, the stroke of the paddle is now almost unheard upon its bosom, but the Waikato, or river of "streaming water," still shapes its swift course over its bounding rapids, and with an echoing sound which would seem to say,—
Men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever.
As we proceeded on our way around the north-eastern shore of the lake, we crossed a small stream called Waipahihi, which flows across a level plain from the direction of Tauhara Mountain. ”

“ Hokitika might boast a fine harbour, were it not for the dangerous bar and shoal-water at the mouth of its river. A long mole has been run out to sea, and moderate-sized steamers can lie alongside the wharf, close to the town. Here we found a busy little launch awaiting passengers for the Mahinapur Creek. I know that this and the lake are among the beauty spots of the West, but a wet day left us only the impression of weird swamps, where white pines grew out of brown water, their branches draped with streamers of ghostly white lichen. ”

“ A short distance below the Wascopin Mission, and the Rapids of the great Dales, we found the first of these submerged stumps. they increased in number, as we descended the River; as is always the case wherever there has been an impediment, thrown into the channel of a stream, so as to raise the water over its natural shores. Immediately above the Wascopin Mission, as we have before noticed, and at least as far up as Fort Walawala, the River is full of Falls and Rapids, and such also we believe to have been the original character of the River below ”

“ Deep gorges with foaming torrents cleft them in all directions, and we drove across a flat where the road winds amid scrub and stones and yellow grasses, with the Waiho river eddying among its boulders on the right hand. As one proceeds, one of the finest, and perhaps one of the strangest, views in the world unfolds ”

“ A change, however, in the land, seems to commence near this place, and it assumes here very much the aspect of red clay, but in some parts the sandy soil predominating, and all lying very irregular, except immediately upon the streams.
I was impressed with the adaptation of the Jundiahi river, a small stream which runs near our inn, for the location of machinery of limited water-power; and when the railroad reaches this place a good mill or cotton ginning establishment would be likely to prove very advantageous on this river. ”

“ The Waikato here is a beautiful broad river, flowing swiftly between low banks 120 feet apart. It suddenly runs into a narrow rocky channel only thirty feet wide. Imagine this enormous volume of water compressed and fighting through the deep trough; the fierce struggle at the entrance, the long green slide of the waters in their gradual descent, the angry, turbulent rapids where the channel becomes still narrower, and, at the last, the sudden shoot over of the mighty waters, between two large rocks. ”

“ The Whangaehu River, which takes its rise in the eastern side of Ruapehu, is one of the largest streams in the colony. Bursting forth high up in the snows of the mountain, it crosses the desert in an easterly direction, and then, with the fall of the country, takes a swift bend towards the south in its course to the coast, where it joins the sea, in a distance of about sixty miles from its source. ”

“ A long ascent took us to the top of a pass 2500 feet in height, a projecting spur not 30 feet wide, with a grand view of mountains and ravines, and a maze of involved streams, which unite in a vigorous torrent, whose course we followed for some hours, till it expanded into a quiet river, lounging lazily through a rice swamp of considerable extent. ”

“ The only ones of any importance are in the Pesháwar Valley. These draw their supplies from the Kábul, Bára, and Swát rivers, but the works supplied by the first two streams only command small areas. The Lower Swát Canal was begun in 1876, but the tribesmen were hostile and the diggers had to sleep in fortified enclosures. The work was not opened till 1885. A reef in the river has made it possible to dispense with a permanent weir. The country is not an ideal one for irrigation, being much cut up by ravines. ”

“ Warping may be resorted to during the flood season to raise the level of adjacent low-lying fields, rendering them at the same time more fertile. Where the river is running above the adjacent plains there is no difficulty in drawing off the turbid water by gravity, under controlled conditions, into diked basins, and even in compelling the river to buttress its own levees. There is certainly great need and great opportunity for China to make still better and more efficient her already wonderful transportation canals and those devoted to drainage, irrigation and fertilization. ”

“ Just north of the Stampede Pass the Yakima River has its source in three small lakes,—Kitchelas, Kalichass, and Cle-ee-lum, and the railroad follows down this stream to its entrance into the Columbia. The valley of the Yakima is rather a great basin than a valley, bounded by the Cascade Mountains on the west,
the Wenatehe Eiver on the north, and the Columbia River on the south and east, containing several smaller valleys on the west side, namely, the Wenass, Nachess, Atahnam, Pisco, Topunish, and Klickitat, with numerous small streams debouching into the Columbia. ”

“ A small stream from the western mountains flows through the town on its way to join the river in the plain. In 1881, a terrific hailstorm swept over mountain and plain; the stream became a roaring torrent and annihilated nearly the whole town—the number of killed and drowned being estimated at a thousand souls.
Following up the stream towards its source, we attained, after a few hours’ climb, the ridge of the mountain, where the roads are worn out of the solid limestone to a depth of twelve feet by the constant traffic between the salt springs to the south-west and Ning-yuan Fu. ”

“ The plateau which stretches between the two rivers Tom and Chulym, affluents of the Obi, at a height of between 800 and 900 feet above the level of the plain, is extremely fertile, the vegetation being most varied, and the whole region is vastly superior in point of picturesqueness to any hitherto visited. The valley of the Yenissei, dominated to the east by mountains and traversed by the magnificent river, is extremely beautiful. The water runs rapidly, is remarkably clear, and in more than one place the majestic stream widens to over 1,000 yards. ”

“ About 5 miles from its lower end it, however, acquires all the characters of one of the Sounds, being bounded by steep mountains that rise out of deep water. At the head of the lake there is a large flat, covered with thickets of the tutu, fuchsia, and other shrubs. This river is called by the Maoris the Wakatipu-kaduku, or the river that leads up to the Wakatipu Lake ”

“ There are no mountains.
Drainage.—The drainage of the country is carried on by the Gumti and Sai rivers, which in their turn receive small tributary streams. The chief of these is the Bạita, a small perennial stream, which, rising in the Hardoi district, passes through the Malihabad pargana in a south-easterly direction, and falls into the Gumti at a point on its right bank near Kánkrábad. "The Loni, another stream having its source in the Mohanlalganj pargana, passes through it, and joins the river near Salempur on its right bank. ”

“ Hitchiti town was, in Hawkins' time, established on the eastern bank of Chatahuchi river, four miles below Chiaha. The natives possessed a narrow strip of good land bordering on the river, and had the reputation of being honest and industrious. They obtained their name from Hitchiti creek, so called at its junction with Chatahuchi river, [and in its upper course Ahíki (Ouhe-gee) ; cf. List] from Creek: ahítchita "to look up (the stream) ." ”

“ In the western parts of the system they mostly go to feed the Kara-muren or the Cherchen-darya, while farther east they flow down into some larger self-contained basin of internal drainage, such as the Achik-kol, the two lakes Kara-kol, or the Ghaz-kol, and even yet farther east make their way, some of them into the lakes of the Tsaidam depression or become lost in its sands or in those of the Kum-tagh desert on the north, or go to feed the headstreams of the great rivers, the Hwang-ho (Yellow River) and the Yangtsze-kiang (Blue River) in the south. ”

“ The damming of the lake, and the accumulation, by this means, of a vast reservoir of water, by rendering more certain and expeditious the navigation of the river, was an exceedingly happy thought And when at length orders were received for his embarkation on the 9th of August, his flotilla was not only borne triumphantly along upon the pile of the impatient waters accumulated for the occasion, but the swelling of the torrent beyond its banks caused wide and unexpected destruction to the growing crops of the Indians on their plantations at Oghkwaga and its vicinity. ”

“ Its river, the Shinano, is the largest in Japan, and it and its affluents bring down a prodigious volume of water. But Japanese rivers are much choked with sand and shingle washed down from the mountains. In all that I have seen, except those which are physically limited by walls of hard rock, a river-bed is a waste of sand, boulders, and shingle, through the middle of which, among sand-banks and shallows, the river proper takes its devious course. ”

“ Where the bore first appears there is a shoal across the river, and below that, the stream is somewhat contracted. The tide flows up past Pará with great velocity, and entering the Guamá river comes to the narrow part of the channel. Here the body of tidal water will be deeper and flow faster, and coming suddenly on to the shoal will form a wave, in the same manner that in a swift brook a large stone at the bottom will cause an undulation, while a slow-flowing stream will keep its smooth surface. ”

“ Here I obtained the most consistent accounts of the river system which, within five days' journey, trends through Uzegura; and I concluded, from what I heard, that there is no doubt of the Mukondokua and Wami rivers being one and the same stream. My informants were the natives of the settlement, and they all concurred in saying that the Kingani above the junction is called the Rufu, meaning the parent stream. Beyond it, following under the line of the hills, at one day's journey distant, there is a smaller river called Msonge. ”

“ The Japanese would begin at the right end of the problem, and build big enough at the start to solve it as a whole, comprehensively. Their plan would be to use up every drop of the flood water by irrigating land with it. There would never at any time of the year be any water running to waste in the lower river. There would never be in the main river more than enough water to supply the canals that irrigated the lowlands of the lower delta. The ship canal from Yuma to the Gulf, and the canals from Yuma to the Needles, Phoenix, and Florence would be not irrigating canals, but drainage canals. ”

“ While collecting we observed that these creeks had larger proportions of gravel-rubble bottom, clearer water, deeper pools, and appeared to be more stable than other creeks in the drainage. In Washington Creek, Lone Star Lake enhanced stability of flow.
At the end of the drought, fishes in group (3) probably were extirpated or decimated in other tributaries of the Wakarusa. After normal flow recommenced in 1956, fishes re-entered the previously uninhabitable streams or stream-segments. ”

“ Near the junction of the Kokatahi the Hokitika turns abruptly to the south-west and changes its character becoming, for more than a mile a deep slow flowing river, the shingle deposits of its smaller but more rapid tributary having damned the waters of the main river back to a considerable extent. Its left bank consists of large morainic accumulations covered with forest vegetation, the right bank being low and covered with shrubs and ferns. ”

“ Besides the Gobard and Hawash, no other river enters the Abhibhad Lake, although the extensive plain to the south, as far as the hills of Hurrah that form the water-shed of the river Whabbee, is drained by a stream, the waters of which flow close to the western side of this lake, through Killaloo to the Hawash. ”

“ The alíktchalgi or great physic makers sent some rats in the night-time, which gnawed the strings, and in the morning they attacked and defeated the flat-heads. They crossed the river at the island, near the mound, and took possession of the country. After this they spread out eastwardly to Otchísi-hátchi or Okmulgi river, to Okoni river, to Ogītchi or How-ge-chuh river, to Chíska tálofa hátchi or Savannah river, called sometimes Sawanógi. They met the white people on the seacoast, who drove them back to their present situation. ”