Nacre

“ The ground is all cultivated about this village, to the foot of the mountains, which is not above four miles; but it is full eight on the west, all overflowed and sown. The Nile is here but shallow, and narrow, not exceeding a quarter of a mile broad, and three feet deep; owing, I suppose, to the resistance made by the island in the middle of the current, and by a bend it makes, thus intercepting the sand brought down by the stream. ”

“ The channel of the Nile is much broken by rocks and islands, and the rapids follow one another in constant succession. Both banks are fringed with a dense belt of bush and high reeds. Looking down any one of these reaches, the tumbling, indigo-coloured water, streaked with foamy threads of white, the purple background of hill and mountain, the sombre greens of the forests and the lighter tints of the reeds, with the brilliant blue of the sky overhead, present a combination of wild river scenery not often to be met with, and not easily to be forgotten. ”

“ To sail up and into it keep the South shore all the way on board. As we did not learn that the Natives had any name for this River, I have called it the River of Mangroves,* (* Still so called.) because of the great quantity of these Trees that are found in it. The Country on the South-East side of this River and Bay is very barren, producing little else but Fern, and such other plants as delight in a Poor Soil. The land on the North-West side is pretty well cover'd with wood, the Soil more fertile, and would no doubt produce the Necessarys of Life, was it Cultivated. ”

“ The bed of the creek was of pure sand, as well as the plains through which it ran, although there was alluvial soil partially mixed with the sand, and they had an abundance of grass upon them, the seed having been collected by the natives for food. ”

“ No helpful showers the mountain ridge supplies:
When other streams with wintry rains increase,
Then rests the Nile within his banks in peace:
When they in turn scarce trickle through the sand,
Then swells the Nile, and spreads o'er all the land. ”

“ Creeks, edged with low hills, wind away from the estuary. When the tide is low, great stretches of mud and sand lie on either side, and here may be seen black cormorants and crowds and crowds of gulls, here and there a heron, and quantities of smaller birds. The scene changes entirely at the mouth of the creek, for here the banks rise into high rugged cliffs, and the water frets restlessly over sunken rocks. ”

“ E. by S. A Haba on the right, before it a lake connected with the river in front; the forest is upon a gentle declivity, and covered with shrubs, thorns, and dwarf-trees, even to the edge of the water. The shore also falls away gently to the river, near which it only rises a little above the narrow green margin of grass. We halt close to the right shore, owing to want of wood.
The shore ascends to about fifteen feet high, where the trees begin, and is composed of nothing but mimosas, although the Nile very certainly does not flow over it; for the river has full play far away to the left. ”

“ Now amidst these ruins, there are many patches of rich soil, which are carefully laid out in plantations, and the neighbouring sea abounds with a variety of most excellent fish, with which, as well as with other provisions, we were always plentifully supplied. Off this part of the coast we could find no ground, at less than a cable's length from the shore, with a hundred and sixty fathoms of line, excepting in a small bight to the eastward of the south point, where we had regular soundings of fifty and fifty-eight fathoms over a bottom of fine sand. ”

“ To the south, east, and west, it is wave after wave of bluffs covered with buffalo grass; not a tree or bush in sight until we get down into the canyons, which wind around among the hills and bluffs like a grassy stream, without a drop of water, stone or pebble; now it is only a brook in width, now a creek, and almost a river. The pockets that line the canyons are like great chambers, and are of every size, shape and height. ”

“ The extensive sheets of fresh water, the luxuriance of the vegetation in the bottoms, and along the edges of the lakes and creeks, and perhaps even the huge mounds of loose sand in which it was so easy to make a nest, and which was always dry, and, is compared with clay lands, warm all tended to attract not only birds and animals of all kinds, but even the blackfellows, for whom this region was a sort of paradise. ”

“ The valley of the Rio Negro, broad as it is, has merely been excavated out of the sandstone plain; for immediately above the bank on which the town stands, a level country commences, which is interrupted only by a few trifling valleys and depressions. Everywhere the landscape wears the same sterile aspect; a dry gravelly soil supports tufts of brown withered grass, and low scattered bushes, armed with thorns.
Shortly after passing the first spring we came in sight of a famous tree, which the Indians reverence as the altar of Walleechu. ”

“ It is beyond the power of my pen to paint the picture of this country as I saw it in the early morning light, while standing at the rear door of the car. Through sand-cuts, over sand-banks, and now over level grassy plains. The little rose bushes leafing out, ready to bloom, and sticking out through the sandiest beds they could find. Where scarcely anything else would think of growing were tiny bushes of sand-cherries, white with blossoms. ”

“ In exposed places near the coast it is little else than gravel beds interspersed with patches of peat and clay, with scarcely a rush or a sedge to break the monotony, but by far the greater part of it is a gently undulating plain, broken up by lakes, rivers, swamps, and bogs; the lakes with patches of green water-plants, the rivers flowing between sedges and rushes, the swamps the breeding haunts of ruffs and phalaropes, the bogs dotted with the white fluffy seeds of the cotton-grass. ”

“ Someone has described the Nile valley as appearing, if seen from above, like a strip of green carpet on a floor of gold, so yellow are the sands that hem it in. No one who has not visited an arid country and noted the influence of water upon the thirsty soil can imagine how distinctly the line is drawn between the verdant field and the barren desert that adjoins it. Where the waters of the Nile can be brought upon the land, a farm will rent for $30 per acre, while a few feet away the land can not be given away. ”

“ One of the Indians, employed as a deck hand on the steamer, landed me at the mouth of a stream. The tide was low, exposing a luxuriant growth of algæ, which sent up a fine, fresh sea smell. The shingle was composed of slate, quartz, and granite, named in the order of abundance. The first land plant met was a tall grass, nine feet high, forming a meadow-like margin in front of the forest. ”

“ It is true that the soil is here also dark in its lower strata; but it is, however, very strongly alloyed with sand, and has but little resemblance to the greasy and slimy soil of Lower Egypt, and even to the shore of the blue Nile. ”

“ It is also an interesting sight to see the natives creep after wild-fowl, and under cover of the reeds and bushes get so near that they can either spear them or catch them with a noose. A reedy lagoon lies at your feet, almost surrounded by rocky cliffs and dusky woods; there are some small open spaces of water, but generally it is so thickly overgrown with high reeds that it looks rather like a swampy wood than a lake; in the distance you see curling up a thin cloud of blue smoke, which indicates that a native encampment is at hand. ”

“ The territory being so spotted with sand hills was the great hindrance to a body of people settling down as the colony had expected to, all together as one settlement. One cannot tell, to look over it, just where the sandy spots are, as it is all covered with grass. They are only a slight raise in the ground and are all sizes, from one to many acres. ”

“ About noon we stopped at the creek side to take some refreshment. The country bore an improved appearance around us, and the cattle found abundance of pasture. It was evident that the creek had been numerously frequented by the natives, although no recent traces of them could be found. It had a bed of coarse red granite, of the fragments of which the natives had constructed a weir for the purpose of taking fish. The appearance of this rock in so isolated a situation, is worthy of the consideration of geologists. ”

“ So the annual overflowings of the Nile, the Ganges, and the river of Amazons, gradually deposit accumulations of soil over surfaces of great extent;—and so also the bottoms of most lakes are covered with thick beds of sand, gravel, and clay, which have been conveyed into them from the higher grounds by the rivers through which they are fed. ”

“ The Riverside colony forms a continuous settlement along the mesa, skirting the river, the deep green of the orange orchards harmonizing splendidly with the lighter green of the vineyards. At close intervals there are houses in every direction, with the bluest smoke rising straight up from their chimneys, and thence carried in long, tiny bands and columns down the valley just level with the tree tops. ”

“ We crossed one or two large plains, clear of wood and even bushes; the soil a stiff tenacious clay, which, though not flooded by the river, retains all the water that falls upon it, there being no descent or fall by which it can be conveyed to its natural drain, the river. ”

“ The marsh, and the fountains, upon comparison with the rise of many of our rivers, became now a trifling object in my sight. I remembered that magnificent scene in my own native country, where the Tweed, Clyde, and Annan rise in one hill; three rivers, as I now thought, not inferior to the Nile in beauty, preferable to it in the cultivation of those countries through which they flow; superior, vastly superior to it in the virtues and qualities of the inhabitants, and in the beauty of its flocks; crowding its pastures in peace, without fear of violence from man or beast. ”

“ Surface, rolling and in places hilly; soil, clay and loam, mixed with sand. In the forks of the creeks, sand predominates. On the west and north-west, inclined to clay.
Jefferson.—Watered by the Ohio river, Indian, Kentucky and Big creeks. Surface various; along the river and creeks, low alluvion; soil, loam mixed with sand. The bottoms are bounded by precipitous bluffs, with towering cliffs of limestone. The table lands are undulating, and the soil inclined to clay. Timber various. Abounds with limestone, masses of freestone, and scattered granite bowlders. ”

“ When I view the steep and high slope of the shores of the Sobàt, and the proportionate thin layer of earth on the immovable strata of clay or original soil, which here is twenty to twenty-five feet higher than on the shore or in the bed of the Nile, I return to my former conviction, that the immeasurable particles of stone and plants stream by means of the breach, and flowing away of the lakes of the Ethiopian highlands, to the lake of the basin-shaped valley of the White Stream which flows off with the Nile, as the deepest point ”

“ Hence the fertile valleys upon the Del Norte, and other streams that thinly meander through this central land.
“Vapour-clouds from the Atlantic undergo a similar detention in crossing the Alleghany range; or, cooling, after having circled a great distance round the globe, descend into the valleys of the Ohio and Mississippi. From all sides of this great continent, as you approach its centre, fertility declines, and only from the want of water. The soil in many places where there is scarcely a blade of grass to be seen, possesses all the elements of vegetation. ”

“ Off to their right front, several miles away, lie the low, broad bottom lands of the Platte. Across the Pumpkinseed, a mile distant, another ridge, like the one on which they halted, only not so high; to the westward a tumbling sea of prairie upland—all buttes, ridges, ravines, coulées—but not a living soul is anywhere in sight. Far as his practiced eye can sweep the horizon and the broad lowlands of the Platte not a sign of living, moving object can Colonel [130] Gaines detect. ”

“ The Nile renders fertile two narrow strips, one on either bank, four thousand miles long, and but a few miles wide. For thirteen hundred miles it floats through a desert and receives but a single tributary in that distance, and yet, after supplying irrigation for the crops of some ten millions of people, it pours into the ocean a scarcely diminished stream. The annual rise of the river not only supplies water but it renews the land by deposits of alluvial soil. ”

“ At fourteen miles struck another creek with water, and camped. The country gone over to-day, though not all of the very best description, has plains in it of the very finest kind—even the sandy table-land bears an abundant crop of grass. The trees are so thick that I can get no view of the surrounding country; the tall beautiful palm grows in this creek. Native smoke about, but we have not seen any natives. There are large masses of volcanic rock on the sides of this creek. ”

“ Our course was north-easterly over sharp swells, among which ran many clear and beautiful brooks; soil gravel, loam, sand and clay, and well covered with dry bunch grass, incapable of producing the grains without irrigation. The swells and streams run north-westerly from the Blue Mountains. ”