Levee

“ The top is not much higher than the top of the original levee, but, being situated at some distance from the banks, its base is 10 feet lower. The immediate banks of the river are so subject to caving that they do not make, in all cases, a safe foundation for a levee. ”

“ It is of necessity entirely surrounded by a levee that rises some fifty-five or sixty feet above low-water mark, or ‘zero,’ as it is called on the Government records. The keeping of the works in repair is a matter of vital importance; constant watching and constant strengthening are the only things that can successfully combat the action of the rushing stream. ”

“ This drew us in at first to find In such a form an angel's mind; And every virtue now supplies The fainting rays of Stella's eyes. See, at her levee crowding swains, Whom Stella freely entertains With breeding, humour, wit, and sense, And puts them to so small expense; Their minds so plentifully fills, And makes such reasonable bills, So little gets for what she gives, We really wonder how she lives! ”

“ The levees, erected at immense cost, are designed to prevent the overflowing of the country on such occasions. When the levees become broken from any cause, immense areas of country are covered with water. ”

“ Moreover, guide, or protection, levees running in a southerly direction are to be built on either side of the floodway, which will direct the waters into a specified channel of a width varying from ten to 20 miles ”

“ At such times he would wonder how the tide stood in the estuary at home. Was the flood swirling up from the Channel, bringing with its clear eddies the smell of the ocean as it hurried in and out among the piles of the old pier? Or was it the time of the ebb when stretches of damp sand come out at the foot of cliffs and when ridges of rock, dripping with cool weed, emerge once more into the sun? What a moment for a swim! ”

“ And, like pebbles and other little people, rivers love to play in the rain. My! What a time! In a storm, with a gray flood pouring from the sky, you hear, mingled with the voice of wind and rain, the swash and gurgle of the eddies as the river goes along in its dance, wild with the joy of it all. In a mountain stream during a heavy rain, with wind, you can also hear the waves dashing against the rocks along the shore or in the stream, and the smothered, bumping, rumbling made by the boulders on the bottom knocking against each other. ”

“ At low tide there is very little river to be seen—it is reduced to a tiny stream that seems to trickle with difficulty through vast stretches of mud. But when the tide does come up it alters the whole appearance, and the place seems to come to life again as the strong current pushes its way up—running far up the little streams, and beneath the houses, which are built out over the river bed, at the bridge, on high wooden gates—giving a wonderfully picturesque effect, and reflecting all shades of color. ”

“ LITTLE RIVER RAPIDS, NORTH CAROLINA.—At this point the river flashes over a sloping ledge of rocks and boulders with irresistible power and a roar like that of thunder. At all seasons of the year the scene is splendid and inspiring, but when the river is swollen with the spring floods and the waters come with a mighty and irresistible flood, dashing over the rocks and carrying away trees and boulders with titanic force and rage, the view is awe-inspiring and grand beyond the power of human pen to describe. ”

“ The river, or rather the bed of it, is here of great width, and most frightful depth, lined on all sides with huge masses of black rock of every imaginable form. The flood that roars through them is seen only at intervals; here in a full heavy sheet of green transparent water, falling straight and unbroken; there dashing along a narrow channel, with a violence that makes one dizzy to see and hear. ”

“ She loved every inch of it—the silvery strips of water that led between bold, rocky headlands out to the broad Atlantic; the tall mountain peaks that showed so rugged an outline against the sky; the brown, peat-stained river that came brawling down from the uplands, and poured itself noisily into the creek; the wide, lonely moors, with their stretches of brilliant green grass and dark, treacherous bog pools; and the craggy cliffs that made a barrier against the ever-dashing waves, and round which thousands of sea birds flew, with harsh cries and whir of white wings. ”

“ Here at our feet is another river, a little brook flowing in clear stream over the roadside sand, born of the last snow-drift and living till the sun drinks it up. And beside it are half a dozen happy boys, paddling with their bare feet, making mud dams, scraping new channels and short cuts for the stream. ”

“ Like such a great river as that he knew so well and frequented all his days, his life flowed steadily and strongly, the brimming stream augmenting always, deepening and widening, the heavier current moving, at the end, more slowly but not through slackening of power, until, at the last turn, the majestic estuary opens and broadens, as, with no hurry of fretting waves, no straining through silted sandbanks, undiminished, the mighty mass of waters mingles with the sea. ”

“ All these things tell us that at one time these two rivers ran into the sea where now the beach stands, and that the waves and the creeping sand got the best of the rivers, and altered the whole face of the country hereabouts. Where once was an inlet and a swift river is now a beach and a broad shallow-stream, lined with marshes, and slowly filling up with salt grasses and soft mud washed down from the red soil of the hills. ”

“ Owing to a flow of upland water down a river the ebb lasts longer than the flood tide by a period, increasing in length as the distance from the mouth of the river increases; and, similarly to the sea, the current may continue to run down a river after the tide has turned and the level of the water is rising. ”

“ For many a mile the banks of the river are of red soil, and as the flood eats into the banks its waters are stained a dull brick colour, which hue is imparted to the Atlantic itself for miles along the coast as the red waters pour out into the sea, bearing with them a wonderful collection of flotsam in the shape of timber, dead stock, and live reptiles. ”

“ The inland lakes that ripple under the wind from the sea, or gleam silver in the light of the moon, are beautiful, hideous, filled with bodies that rise and float, face down. And yet here and there the situation is not without a sort of grim humour. Brilliant engineers on one side or the other are experimenting with the flood. ”

“ We crawled down to the river bank and feeble folk were we, That Julie Claire from God-knows-where, and Barb-wire Bill and me. From shore to shore we heard the roar the heaving ice-floes make, And loud we laughed, and launched our raft, and followed in their wake. The river swept and seethed and leapt, and caught us in its stride; And on we hurled amid a world that crashed on every side. With sullen din the banks caved in; the shore-ice lanced the stream; The naked floes like spooks arose, all jiggling and agleam. ”

“ From my windows I see over the tops of variegated trees the river, with its purple heights beyond, and a few moments' walk brings me to the lovely shore, where sails are gliding continually by, and the huge steamers sweep past with echoing tread, and a train of waves, whose rush relieves the monotone of the ripples. In the country behind us are mountain-paths, and lonely glens, with gurgling streams, and many-voiced water-falls. ”

“ The river scarcely ran at our passing it; when, all on a sudden, we heard a noise on the mountains above, louder than the loudest thunder. Our guides, upon this, flew to the baggage, and removed it to the top of the green hill; which was no sooner done, than we saw the river coming down in a stream about the height of a man, and breadth of the whole bed it used to occupy. ”

“ Yet tumbling down from that great eminence, where the gray spires of the peaks are dwarfed by distance until they grow thin as needles, is a stream of water, fed by springs that lie in the lap of still taller mountains in the rear, rushing in tumultuous flow until it breaks into seven waterfalls, and then checks its pace as it joins the river that runs on to the sea. ”

“ The wind being fair and the river in full flood—seven men's height above the usual level, and boiling and bubbling and tearing down like a torrent—we sail from daylight to dark, but at night we are hauled up and moored to the bank, so that the people may go ashore to sleep if they are so minded. ”

“ It is now the dry season, but, nevertheless, the river is swift and deep, a tide of clear blue water too swift and too deep to ford or swim. In the rainy season it must be a boisterous mighty stream, for its fall is rapid. ”

“ The river itself has a character of wildness all its own-now, brawling over rugged rocks-now foaming between high and narrow sides, abrupt as walls, sometimes, flowing over a ledge of granite, without a ripple on the surface-then plunging madly into some dark abyss, to emerge again, lower down the valley, in one troubled sea of foam and spray: its dull roar the only voice that echoes in the mountain gorge. ”

“ Comes that river
From forth the sultry places down the south,
Rising far up in midmost realm of day,
Among black generations of strong men
With sun-baked skins. 'Tis possible, besides,
That a big bulk of piled sand may bar
His mouths against his onward waves, when sea,
Wild in the winds, tumbles the sand to inland;
Whereby the river's outlet were less free,
Likewise less headlong his descending floods.
It may be, too, that in this season rains
Are more abundant at its fountain head,
Because the Etesian blasts of those northwinds
Then urge all clouds into those inland parts. ”

“ By the water's edge in the shaded light there is a suggestion of mystery, and the bed of the stream is so shut in that but for the stirring of the leaves, the shifting gleams of sunlight in the waters, and the freshness of the air, one could almost imagine oneself underground. ”

“ They look and act like those hills of the desert, the sand dunes, and they record the drift of wind-whipped sand across a naked land, before the river had established a floodplain within its present confines. ”

“ The beautiful river, from small beginnings, flowing down shelving rocks and flowering banks, is swollen in mighty grandeur until it bursts asunder the mountain barriers, and sweeps along, bearing on its broad bosom the wealth of two hemispheres, to lose itself in the limitless ocean, and become a part of the eternity of waters. ”

“ When the tide flows, the river slips into the channels, and the tiny runnels of spring water are driven back to their sources; the ditches fill and overflow; the fishes, in many cases, catch their prey within a yard of where the cattle were feeding; and the grass becomes impregnated by the tide. It is this daily advance of the brackish flood that makes the marshes so valuable as grazing grounds. ”

“ The mighty river, after its dizzy plunge at the great cataract, and mad tumultuous rush and eddy at the rapids and whirlpool, smoothes its rugged front and restrains its impetuous stream to the semblance of a placid old age after a wild and stormy life. ”

“ At our feet a stream was struggling with the multitude of rude rocks, which Nature, in one of her primeval convulsions, had flung here and there in masses into its current; sometimes uniting into irregular ledges, over which the water swept with impetuosity;—sometimes standing insulated in the stream, and increasing the energies of the river by their resistance;—sometimes breaking forward from the bank, and giving a bolder effect to its romantic outline. ”

“ We are rowed on the beautiful river every day that it is warm enough—a very winding river not much broader than your favourite creek—flowing sometimes through level meadows, sometimes round rocky promontories & steep wooded hills which, with their wonderful autumn tints, are like a gay flower border mirrored in the water. ”

“ For hundreds of miles on both banks of the river—more especially on the right—the bottom lands are scarred and seamed by a labyrinthine network of creeks, bayous, and lagoons, all old channels of the river, which the current in its caprice has long since forsaken, leaving them in deep, dark stagnation, or only moving sluggishly to and fro, during the season of floods. ”

“ Once more the running stream is stopped, and slowly the muddy tide rises higher and higher, obliterates the lowlands and creeps slowly up the sides of the high ground, around the skirts of its pygmy mountain-chains, and rolls restored amid groups of remade islets. ”

“ I have seen flocks streaming south in the fall so large that they were flowing over from horizon to horizon in an almost continuous stream all day long, at the rate of forty or fifty miles an hour, like a mighty river in the sky, widening, contracting, descending like falls and cataracts, and rising suddenly here and there in huge ragged masses like high-plashing spray. ”

“ So also is the rapidity of each stream, some of them moving in a turbulent and awful manner, as the rapids and eddies at the foot of large falls, some moving in large majestic waves like the swells of a large deep lake agitated by the wind, and some in a beautiful smooth current, down which the canoes are scarcly perceived to move. ”

“ Of our down-stream travel there is little really to be said. We established a number of facts--that the River dashes most scenically from rapid to rapid, so that the stagnant pool theory is henceforth untenable; that the hills get higher and wilder the farther you penetrate to the interior, and their cliffs and rock-precipices bolder and more naked; that there are trout in the upper reaches, but not so large as in the lower pools; and, above all, that travel is not a joy for ever. ”