Yalu River

“ Davis suggests that a great derangement of waters of the Yellow River, one of the largest in the world, might even now cause the flood of Yaou to be repeated, and lay the most fertile and populous plains of China under water. In modern times the bursting of the banks of an artificial canal, into which a portion of the Yellow River has been turned, has repeatedly given rise to the most dreadful accidents, and is a source of perpetual anxiety to the government. ”

“ A noble piece of Nature's handiwork is that same Yallé forest. The river flows sluggishly through its centre in a breadth of perhaps ninety yards, and the immense forest trees extend their giant arms from the high banks above the stream, throwing dark shadows upon its surface, enlivened by the silvery glitter of the fish as they dart against the current. Little glades of rank grass occasionally break the monotony of the dark forest; sandy gullies in deep beds formed by the torrents of the rainy season cut through the crumbling soil and drain toward the river. ”

“ I never heard the Yalung given that name by the natives. The word is a Chinese approximation to the Tibetan Nya Rong ("Valley of the Nya") . The Tibetans all know the river as the Nya Ch'u or Nya river; but the Chinese, so far as my experience goes, never give it any other name than Kin [Chin] Ho, which means "Gold River,"—so that "Yalung" is really only a book-word. The number of rivers in western China, of which the word "Gold" forms part of the Chinese name, might almost fill a page. ”

“ Threshing up against the current, the gunboats and stern-wheelers one after another entered the gorge. The Nile, which below is nearly a mile across, narrows to a bare 200 yards. The pace of the stream becomes more swift. Great swirls and eddies disturb its surface. High on either side rise black, broken, and precipitous cliffs, looking like piles of gigantic stones. Through and among them the flood-river pours with a loud roaring, breaking into foam and rapids wherever the submerged rocks are near the surface. Between the barren heights and the water is a strip of green bushes and grass. ”

“ Into that hollow we made our way in an east-south-easterly direction, in search of the vaunted yaila. After riding over stony and difficult ground for over an hour, I called a halt, deciding to abandon the quest. We could see that we had reached a point about south of the eastern summit, for the outline of the rampart was already preparing to decline. To proceed further would be to occupy an unsuitable position for the purpose of exploring the mountain. Our tents were erected a little north of the head of the chasm through which flows the Gumgum river. ”

“ It is so called from the yellowness of its water, caused by the vast quantity of mud which is swept down by its rapid current to the sea; hence, the common saying, "When the Yellow River runs clear," as an equivalent of the Greek Kalends. The huge embankments, built to confine it to a given course, are continually being forced by any unusual press of extra water, with enormous damage to property and great loss of life, and from time to time this river has been known to change its route altogether, suddenly diverging, almost at a right angle. ”

“ The Gwelo River itself is not a pleasing one; it is chiefly a bed of hard, black mud, lying between black, shiny rocks, with a few pools here and there, with an unpleasant smell about it. The sun, too, is now very powerful, and we are all feeling tired. ”

“ When the kangaroos by the thousand die,
It's rough on the travelling sheep, as 'Banjo' sings.
This station, when reached, presented a different appearance from North Yalla-doora. The prairie-like plain, far as the eye could reach, was bisected by a wide and turbid stream, flowing between banks, now low and partly submerged, now lofty and precipitous; occasionally overhanging as if cut away by the angry waters, in one of the foaming floods which, from time to time, alternated with seasons when the shallow stream trickled feebly over the rock-bars in the river-bed. ”

“ The hill tracks, which form the main lines of communication, are seldom easy; they are often difficult, sometimes dangerous.”
The country is watered by the river which goes in its northern course indifferently by the names of the Yarkhun, the Mastuj or the Chitral River, and which, flowing from a glacier of the Hindu Kush, runs south-westerly to Asmar, where it becomes known as the Kunar River, and falls into the Kabul River near Jalalabad. ”

“ Two thousand feet below, between these two ranges, flowed, in a wide barren valley, a river called the Darma Yankti. This river is the principal source of that great river which afterward takes the name of Sutlej. I was glad to be the first white man to visit the place where it has its birth. In the distance a flat plateau, rising some eight hundred feet above the river and resembling a gigantic railway embankment, could be seen for many miles. Far away to the north stood a chain of high blue mountains capped with snow—undoubtedly the Gangri chain with the Kelas peaks. ”

“ Standing on the brink of the chasm the heavy roaring of the imprisoned river comes to the ear in a sort of hollow, hungry growl, scarcely audible from the depths, and strongly suggestive of demons in torment below. Lofty pines on the bank of the stream ‘dwindle to shrubs in dizziness of distance.’ Everything beneath has a weird and deceptive appearance. The water does not look like water, but like oil. ”

“ After advancing about ten miles in a south-east direction from Berberah, we entered rough and broken ground, and suddenly came upon a Fiumara about 250 yards broad. The banks were fringed with Brab and Tamarisk, the Daum palm and green rushes: a clear sparkling and shallow stream bisected the sandy bed, and smaller branches wandered over the surface. This river, the main drain of the Ghauts and Sub-Ghauts, derives its name from the increased volume of the waters during night: evaporation by day causes the absorption of about a hundred yards. ”

“ Its descent is more rapid in the upper part of its course. A little below the Sea of Galilee it receives its largest confluent, the River Yarmuk, which breaks through the heights of the Hauran to the east. The volume of the water thus poured in nearly equals that of the Jordan itself at this point. Further south the Brook Jalûd comes down on the west from the Plain of Jezreel past Bethshean. ”

“ In this valley, the Yellowstone, a broad, strong stream, meanders back and forth, forming on both sides strong, perpendicular bluffs of rock and clay, forcing the road constantly out of the flat valley over the points, and causing wide deflections in the road to head the ravines or ‘coolies,’ which flow to the river. There is a strongly-marked wagon trail, but no bridge or cuts, a purely natural road, with steep ascents and descents, and frequent gullies, about as much as wagons could pass. We sometimes shifted into our light wagons, to save the fatigue of travel. ”

“ The dam on the Euphrates which regulated the flowing of its waters into the Hindîyeh canal has been allowed to fall into disrepair; every year a deeper and a stronger stream flows down the Hindîyeh, and matters have reached such a pass that during the season of low water the eastern bed is dry, the palm gardens of Ḥilleh are dying for lack of irrigation, and all the country along the river-bank below Ḥilleh has gone out of cultivation. ”

“ Each of these propositions, which threatened to modify the natural character and unity of the reservation, was strenuously resisted by Park administrations and the public generally.
In 1919 an irrigation project was sponsored by Idaho interests. It was a comprehensive plan that contemplated a dam on Yellowstone River, thereby raising the level of Yellowstone Lake. The water from this mighty reservoir would then be tapped by a tunnel through the Continental Divide, which would deliver the water into the Snake River. Other dams were designed to impound water along Fall and Bechler rivers. ”

“ The Ya-lung is unnavigable, and the only craft on its green waters were three ferry boats, each about thirty feet long. From the bed of shingle which lies below the customs station, we followed for a short distance the right bank, which is here lined with huge boulders, and then turned south-west up a gully, down which flows a streamlet to the main river. The country gradually opens out, and cultivation, which had practically ceased since we left the Ning-yuan plain, began to reappear on the gentler slopes of the mountain sides to the south-east. ”

“ In the neighbourhood of a small fort called Kila Sofarak, about 40 miles from Daolatyar, there is a parting of the ways. Over the water-parting at the head of the stream by the Bakkak Pass a route leads into the Yakulang valley, a continuation of the Band-i-Amir, or river of Balkh, which, in the course of its passage through the gorges of the mountains, here forms a series of natural aqueducts uniting seven narrow and deep lakes. Inexpressibly wild and impressive is the character of the scenery surrounding those deep-set lakes in the depths of the Afghan hills. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In the woods there are almonds of various kinds and superior quality. Towards the east there is another small lake called Puaja, whose waters (united with those of Rogoaguado and Yapacha) form the river Yatachico, or Black river, which is a confluent of the Mamoré. I presume the Yata Grande is only an arm of the Beni from the clearness of its waters, from the declivity of the land towards the Mamoré, and because its sources are not found in the Steppes, (Llanos) there only arising from the Black river of the Lake Rogagua of Reyes, which is a confluent of the Beni. ”

“ The Nile never flows over the top of the dam, but always through the gates and the canal at one side. When the gates are closed during the dry season, enough water is held back by this structure of steel and granite to form a [133] lake over one hundred miles long, and this is let out as needed to supplement the ordinary flow of the river and give the crops plenty of water all summer through. There is water enough in the reservoir to give all the families of the United States all they could use for four or five months, and enough to supply Great Britain and Ireland the entire year. ”

“ Return freight which can not be tracked through the rapids is portaged. Although the Yellow River is 2,500 miles long, it is only navigable 150 miles from its mouth to Tsinan City, and in short broken sections in Mongolia and Honan. The loess silt which it carries, and the porous loess bed through which it flows, make it only a roaring unmanageable spring and summer drain, China’s sorrow of flood and famine. Its memorable changing of bed to mouths 300 miles apart, from Kiangsu to Shangtung province in 1854, and from banks 100 miles apart in the Gobi Desert, are well known. ”

“ The stream is not a very large one, but clear, fresh, cold water flows from the snows of the western slopes of Jibel Unila throughout the entire year. Although slightly brackish the water is drinkable to cattle, but the inhabitants rely for their supply upon the many streams and springs that form its tributaries. The river flows along the Teluet valley from east to west, and at the south-west corner of the plain passes out through a gorge to flow into the Idermi, which, eventually joining the Wad Dads, forms the Wad Draa, the largest and most important [112] river of trans-Atlas Morocco. ”

“ The central region thus enclosed is a dead level of cultivated land, almost destitute of trees, and sparsely dotted with villages. The southern portion presents almost one unbroken sheet of cultivation. The boundary rivers form the only interesting feature in Jalaun. The river Non flows through the centre of the district, which it drains by innumerable small ravines instead of watering. Jalaun has suffered much from the noxious kans grass, owing to the spread of which many villages have been abandoned and their lands thrown out of cultivation. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is not much of a lake, as Americans would look at it. It is a sort of lagoon, covering from five hundred to a thousand square miles, according to different authorities; but the inundation of the Nile makes varying areas of water. The Damietta branch of the great river empties into the sea about thirty miles to the west of us, and this lagoon covers the region between it and the Suez Canal. ”