Bank (river)

“ A fairly broad stream—of deep water ran down one side of the naked bed, near the bank, and streamlets trickled here and there, but most of the bed lay dry and baking under the burning rays of the sun. Above the dam, however, the river was full from bank to bank, a broad sheet of water, across which pleasant, wooded hills, dotted here and there with wind-mills, siloes, and farmhouses, presented themselves against the turquoise dome of the sky. ”

“ One interests oneself in these things more particularly because there is nothing at first especially striking about the river scenery itself. Ten or twenty feet of bank cuts off the view on either side, and large and varied features are wanting. The banks are lined with the densest jungle of mangroves and aquatic grasses, while creepers of a hundred kinds struggle for life among the interlacing stems. ”

“ Every few minutes the loamy bank would tip down a great load of earth upon its besieger, and fall back a foot, sometimes a yard, and the writhing river would press after, until at last the pointe was quite swallowed up, and the great river glided by in a majestic curve and asked no more. ”

“ Paddling toward the northern bank, simply because it had saved them in their former peril, they floated like a leaf in the shadows of the precipices, watching for some footway by which to turn the lair of the monster ahead.
The scenery here did not consist exclusively of two lofty ramparts fronting each other. Before the river had established its present channel it had tried the strength of the plateau in various directions, slashing the upper strata into a succession of cañons, which were now lofty and arid gullies, divided from each other by every conceivable form of rocky ruin. ”

“ A few minutes later, bursting through a screen of underbrush, they found themselves confronted by a river whose bubbling violet-blue waters extended for at least four kilometers from shadowy bank to bank, with the ridge tapering to a point almost in its exact center. ”

“ The bank here is not so high above the roaring waters of the rapids, for the spur of the mountain which forms the cliff lies at a right angle to the river, and the greater part of the cliff is thus on the shore, with its height growing less and less as it merges into the main slope of the mountain-side. From the turn in the road, in front of the house, a footpath leads down the bank of the river to the cliff, and, climbing stairlike up the face of the steep bluff, zigzags down the easier slope of the down-river side, to come again into the road below. ”

“ The bank is so crowded nowadays that many people are moving away altogether: O no, it isn’t what it used to be, at all. Otters, kingfishers, dabchicks, moorhens, all of them about all day long and always wanting you to do something—as if a fellow had no business of his own to attend to!”
“What lies over there?” asked the Mole, waving a paw towards a background of woodland that darkly framed the water-meadows on one side of the river.
“That? O, that’s just the Wild Wood,” said the Rat shortly. “We don’t go there very much, we river-bankers.” ”

“ When the slope is steep the law seems to be different, the tendency for deposit or scour to occur on the bank depending on the actual velocity without much relation to the depth. The velocity very near to a steep bank is always low relatively to that in the rest of the stream. Thus there is often a tendency for silt to deposit on the bank, especially in the upper part, and for the side to become vertical except for a slight rounding at the lower corner. A bank may receive deposits when the bed may be receiving none, and it may have a persistent tendency to grow out towards the stream. ”

“ Marcus asked me to go round the bank with him, and after thinking it well over I have concluded to throw out three of my fields and make up a straight bank from the upland down to the Black River, a distance of half a mile, high, wide, and strong enough to act as a river bank, and resist the rushing water which comes with immense force in the Black River, for it is the deepest stream in this section, in many places 60 or 70 feet deep. ”

“ The use of the banks belong also to the public by the laws of nations, as the use of the river itself does. Therefore, every one is free to moor his vessel to the bank, to fasten his cables to the trees growing on it, to deposit the cargo of his vessel in those places in like manner as every one is free to navigate the river itself. ”

“ In general, all banks are beautiful things, and will reward work better than large landscapes. If you live in a lowland country, you must look for places where the ground is broken to the river's edges, with decayed posts, or roots of trees; or, if by great good luck there should be such things within your reach, for remnants of stone quays or steps, mossy mill-dams, etc. Nearly every other mile of road in chalk country will present beautiful bits of broken bank at its sides; better in form and color than high chalk cliffs. ”

“ At two thirds of the distance from the right bank he will see a stream large enough to be called a river, of no great depth, but of great force and violence. Immediately beyond the left bank he will see a fertile country resembling that he has just past, and uniting with it but for the expanse of white stones. ”

“ While we have stood upon the bank of the swelling river, and pointed to some structure of old rising on the bank, declaring that not a stone could be moved until the very heavens should fall, little by little the foundations have been undermined, and the full crash of its falling has first awoke us from our security. ”

“ In the case when the boat was a total wreck, our friends were obliged to encamp for a week on the river-bank in a hut which they constructed out of their stores and luggage, with the sail of the boat spread over the top by way of roof—a somewhat ineffectual one when the rain came pouring down.
The river-banks are studded with temples, pagodas, and shrines, and the people in this part of the country are far more assiduous in their worship than anywhere else: we continually noticed them offering incense or paper money to the gods. ”

“ If L is the length of a spur measured at right angles to the bank, the length of bank which it protects is about 7 L—3 L upstream and 61 4 L downstream,—but the spur has to be strongly built, and its cost is, in many cases, not much less than the expense of protecting the whole bank with a continuous lining. ”

“ The vertical height—from the water-level to the ground outside the bank,—divided by the length of the line of percolation is the hydraulic gradient, as in the case of a pipe, and this gradient is more or less a measure of the tendency to leakage. A bank which has water constantly against it nearly always becomes almost water-tight in time. The time is less or greater according as the soil is better, and according to the amount of care with which the bank is made. ”

“ You saw the solitary woman as we turned the corner; she was put there to signal when the rafts were coming; if you see a woman alone on a bank, you know what you are in for. The river here is narrow and the current slow—you have no chance. On the one side the banks are low, and they can draw the rafts on shore and unload the merchandise while the men on the other side, high up on the cliffs, cover you with their guns. ”

“ A little to the north of the village the river is intersected by a sand-bank. This bank was covered by a multitude of water-fowl of various kinds, whose white plumage looked like a sheet of snow in the midst of the river. The channel for the passage of canoes is near the right bank. The surrounding country is very barren: not a single shrub is to be seen. The soil consists of immense marshes, which are inundated at the swell of the waters. The shore on either side is so extremely low that the river seems on the point of overflowing its banks. ”

“ A remarkable example of such accumulation is the well-known shell-bank a mile and a half south of New Harmony, Indiana, and situated on a high hill 170 feet above the level of an arm of the Wabash River. The bank covers an area of a quarter of an acre, and has attracted the attention of eminent scientists like Leasure, Say, Lyell and others, but nothing of value was developed that would refer the construction of this and similar banks to any people more ancient than the Mound-builders. ”

“ Continuing in a more easterly direction in order to avoid the deep watercourses near the banks, we found the country wore a much less arid appearance, and changing our direction to N.N.W. in order to ascend some high ranges distant two miles and a half, overlooking the east bank of the river, we came suddenly upon some native tracks, and presently surprised two children, who scampered down the bank in very natural alarm, and were soon lost among the tall reeds. ”

“ Hereabouts we had to cross to the right bank to avoid a very strong current; and having to go under a very long stretch of falling bank, we very narrowly escaped being buried by a fall of many tons of earth. While paddling along, our captain saw ahead, small pieces of earth dropping down the straight wall of the bank, and just had time to sheer out into mid-river when down the mass came, very nearly bringing with it a lofty tree, which, had it fallen, would certainly have reached us with its topmost branches. ”

“ I was standing upon the bank of the river; and. apparently, the only other human beings in the world were my interlocutors, who were even then just disappearing from my horizon down the steep bank toward the river's dry bed. ”

“ At present the bank extends a little farther northward than it did when the Powell survey was made. These changes all resulted from the natural and gradual processes of accretion and erosion, which are rather pronounced in Red River. Its currents and channels shift from one side of its wide bed to the other, gradually cut away one bank and build up the other, and later on reverse that action. Where, as here, a boundary bank is changed by these processes the boundary, whether private or public, follows the change. ”

“ An artificial bank of 3, 4, or 5 feet has been raised on the natural one, has made that sufficient to contain its full waters, and to protect a fertile and extensive country from its ravages. These are become the real banks of the river, on which the laws operate as if the whole was natural. The Nile, | Nile.| like the Missisipi, has natural banks, not competent in every part to the conveyance of its waters. In these parts artificial banks are, in like manner, raised, through which and the natural bayous and artificial canals the inundation, when at a given [99] height, is admitted ”

“ The checking of the current at the upper and lower mouths of the abandoned channel soon obstructs them with the deposits, and in a few years forms a crescent-shaped lake, of which there are so many in the bottoms adjacent to the river. The convex bank in a bend is built up as rapidly by the deposits as the opposite concave bank washes off, so that the river does not usually become any wider in the bends on account of the process. The deepest water is always next to the concave or wasting bank, where the most current flows. ”

“ The whole of this bank is perfectly bare, and of a greyish-brown colour; no plant can grow, because the masses of clay are always ready to fall in, and are subject to perpetual change. The great heat obliged the towers to drink frequently, which they effected in a singular, often dangerous position, lying flat on the ground, with their heads downwards, and their legs above on the slope of the bank. Beyond the bend, the river was again 180 paces broad. ”

“ The Mole was bewitched, entranced, fascinated. By the side of the river he trotted as one trots, when very small, by the side of a man who holds one spell-bound by exciting stories; and when tired at last, he sat on the bank, while the river still chattered on to him, a babbling procession of the best stories in the world, sent from the heart of the earth to be told at last to the insatiable sea. ”

“ How lovely the little river is, with its dark changing wavelets! It seems to me like a living companion while I wander along the bank, and listen to its low, placid voice, as to the voice of one who is deaf and loving. ”

“ Eliza made her desperate retreat across the river just in the dusk of twilight. The gray mist of evening, rising slowly from the river, enveloped her as she disappeared up the bank, and the swollen current and floundering masses of ice presented a hopeless barrier between her and her pursuer. ”

“ The wheels rolled on, and rolled down by the Monument and by the Tower, and by the Docks; down by Ratcliffe, and by Rotherhithe; down by where accumulated scum of humanity seemed to be washed from higher grounds, like so much moral sewage, and to be pausing until its own weight forced it over the bank and sunk it in the river. ”

“ The banks are formed of large masses of limestone; and the cardinal-flower and the tiger-lily seem to have taken an especial fancy to this spot, and to vie with each other in the display of their gorgeous colours.
It is an excellent place for fishing; the water is very deep close to the rocky pavement that forms the bank, and it has a pebbly bottom. Many a magic hour, at rosy dawn, or evening gray, have I spent with my husband on this romantic spot; our canoe fastened to a bush, and ourselves intent upon ensnaring the black bass, a fish of excellent flavour that abounds in this place. ”

“ The high banks formed by the action of the stream in cutting through the rich soil vary from the right side to the left, according to the course of the stream—the corresponding bank on the opposite side being generally of a slope, more or less abrupt, as the bank is high. ”