River bend

“ Expert testimony is that a change of conditions in one bend produces changes as great, or nearly so, in the next bend below.
The river flows around a big bend, known as Wolf Creek Bend, just before it reaches the mouth of Wolf Creek. Here it runs almost due south. ”

“ Gently, it would float on the easy surface of the quiet, moonlit Bend. In front of the house, it would move faster and faster. Where the river narrows, it would be caught as if by mighty hands hidden beneath the rushing flood, and dragged onward still faster and faster. ”

“ After three miles on the last reach the river turns gradually with a bend, to its general southerly direction, the bend being encircled by a low bank covered with tall cypresses, which keep the traveller in constant dread of falling on his boat, which in spite of his utmost exertion is forced by an irresistible current close into the bend. ”

“ The name seems to have been that of a bend in the river at some point in the vicinity of Tuxedo Pond to which it was extended from a certain bend or bends in the stream. A modern interpretation from P'tuksit, "Round foot," is of no merit except in its first word. ”

“ When a bend has formed in a channel previously straight, the stream at the lower end of the bend, by setting against the opposite bank, tends to cause another bend of the opposite kind to the first. Thus 44 the tendency is for the stream to become tortuous and, while the tortuosity is slight, the length, and therefore the slope and velocity, are little affected; but the action may continue until the increase in the length of the stream materially flattens the slope, and the consequent reduction in velocity causes erosion to cease. ”

“ THE GOLDEN EAGLE—Rocky spires and crags in the high elevations of the Chisos Mountains provide an ideal setting for the Golden Eagle.
Vegetation in Big Bend National Park has been influenced by climatic conditions as well as the various elevations above sea level. These factors, contributing to species and types of plant communities, have provided for four separate groups—desert, foothills, mountains and river valley types. Many of the desert plants are typical of the vegetation of the desert and plains throughout the southwest. ”

“ The most accessible of these places, and the point where a canyon was not in evidence was at a pronounced double bend in the river where the city of Bend is now situated. It afforded a good place to camp in pleasant surroundings. ”

“ To the north the American Bend—sometimes ironically called Happy Valley—spread out a green half-circle against a background of frowning hill and sandy slope that led to the desert; to the south, Mr. Wheeler's left hand as he sat, the Dona Ana Valley, wide and green between jutting broken mesas of black lava, stretched away beyond the line of vision, dotted with orchard and hearth-smoke. It was a famed and fertile spot, cultivated for more than two centuries; the American Bend was a new enterprise, anticipating the big dam now being built by the Reclamation Service. ”

“ Though the forest was as yet only half in leaf, and the height of the flood covered all other than the highest of the bottoms, the nature of the scene was an unending wonder to my companions, who in turn compared it with the sterile mountains of Old Spain and the deserts of New Spain. They could not liken it to the tamed woodlands of England; for, notwithstanding a generation of settlement, with the river long since the main artery of a great commerce, these banks were as yet in many places unbroken wilderness, the abode of elk and deer and wolf, of tigerish panther and lumbering bear. ”

“ A coast-guard station stood there, brought into touch with the world by means of the row of telegraph-posts that ran, mile after mile, straight as an arrow, along this shingle-bank, which defended from the sea the miles of marshes and sand flats which lay on the landward side of it. Through the middle of them broadening into a glittering estuary when the tide was high ran the river that debouched into the sea beyond the point; at low tide it was but a runnel of water threading its way through the enormous flatness of shoal and mud-bank where flocks of sea-birds hovered. ”

“ North and east lay a delectable land, where broad fields alternated with woods, round which hovered, like a green mist, the first outbreak of bursting leaves, and down the centre of the valley, unseen but traceable from a livelier flush of green, ran the river. To the south there were only downs, rising and falling in strong undulations like the muscles of strong arms interlaced. ”

“ To-day, in the windless, cold calm of mid-winter, though the sun was brilliant in a blue sky overhead, an opaque mist, thick as cotton-wool, lay over the surface of the water, and, taking the winding road through the woods, which, following the estuary, turned the point, they presently found themselves, as they mounted, quite clear of the mist that lay below them on the river. Their steps were noiseless on the mossy path, and almost immediately after they had turned the corner, as Francis paused to light a cigarette, they heard from just below them the creaking of oars in their rowlocks. ”

“ Below me lay the grey limestone cliffs, but where I sat a wave of the desert had broken, and the immediate foreground was golden sand. Farther away, in all hues of peacock green, lay the strip of cultivated land, and beyond, the steel blue of the ancient and mysterious river. It was early yet in the afternoon, and the sun still high, so that the whole land glittered in this glorious high festival of light and colour. ”

“ Those who have not may try to picture tremendous—and the word is used with its amplest significance—walls of slightly overhanging rock, through which aided by grinding boulders and scoring shingle, the river has widened as well as deepened its channel a little every century, while between the white welter at their feet lies a breadth of troubled green where the stream flows heaped up, as it were, in the center. ”

“ The upland declines a little, the valley broadens towards the sea, as the river changes into an estuary. Between the one and the other there is no very hard and fast division; the ground by the side of each is low, but as a rule by the river it is just high enough to be naturally fit for cultivation, while by the estuary it is a marsh. But as the ground becomes more salubrious, the channel becomes more shallow, and at one place, a short distance above the confluence of a tributary stream from the north—the Lea—this change in the character of the valley is a little more rapid than elsewhere. ”

“ The sun swung up out of Europe and burned down upon the canoe with a heat so equatorial in quality that Bennie discarded both his mackintosh and his sporting jacket. All signs of human life had disappeared from the distant banks of the river and the bow of the canoe faced a gray-blue flood emerging from a wilderness of scrubby trees. A few gulls flopped their way coast-ward, and at rare intervals a salmon leaped and slashed the slow-moving surface into a boiling circle ”

“ During this pause we escaped out of the Quarters, and proceeded up the river, past Brad-well Creek, where Thames barges lie, and past Tollesbury, with its long pier, while the high tide was still slack. We could not reach Maldon, which is the Mecca of the Blackwater, and we anchored a few miles below that municipal survival, in the wildest part of the river, and watched the sun disappear over vast, flat expanses of water as smooth as oil, with low banks whose distances were enormously enhanced by the customary optical delusions of English weather. ”

“ A great raft of lumber was ready to start down the river, and men were scrambling about it loosing the mooring-chains. The pond was full of logs lately run down on a freshet, and the green flood swirled noisily past them. Its color indicated that the snow was melting fast on the lofty inland ranges, and sweet resinous scents rose from the stacks of cedar where the sunshine struck hot upon them. A cloud of smoke streamed across the long sheds and streaked the pines behind the mill with a dingy smear; and the scream of saws and the crash of flung-out boards filled the clearing. ”

“ He had wrestled with the swiftness of the stream as it narrowed, had clung to rocks and tree-roots below the surface, letting the current comb over and around and almost through him, then, letting go of his anchorage, had been floated down into the lake again with arms and legs outspread, and now, lying close-pressed to the turf with wet chest and dripping shoulders, he seemed to be part of the triumph of the summer, and of the immortal youth of the world. ”

“ But Blake had told him to fetch wood for a fire, that they might signal the watchers on the heights. He hastened up over the rocks to the heaps of logs and branches stranded on the high end of the barrier by the freshets. Every year the river, swollen by the spring rains, brimmed over the top of this natural dam.
Yet not all the heaps lying on the ledges were driftwood. As Ashton approached, he was horrified to see that the largest and highest situated piles were nothing else than masses of bones. Drawn by a gruesome fascination, he climbed up to the nearest of the ghastly heaps. ”

“ The bathing-place was by a weir, where the green water plunged through the sluices, filling the stream with foam and sound; all about floated the exquisite reedy smell of warm river-water, bringing with it a sense of cool and unvisited places, hidden backwaters among green fields, where the willows leaned together, and the fish hung mute in the pools. ”

“ He examined the shore at the foot of the wood-covered hills carefully. Creek by creek, bay by bay, his eye searched the shore-line for any sign of life. He found none, nowhere was there any sign of life; any thin column of smoke betokening the presence of man. He looked at the other shore of the lake, though without any expectation of finding that which he sought. It was bleak and barren, and precipitous in places, where the hills seemed to rise directly from the lake's edge. Nothing moved there, and a single glance told him that the land trail on that side was an impossibility. ”

“ At times, when the water is very high, the current will cut a new route across the low isthmus, or neck, of a peninsula, around which sweeps a long reach of the main channel, leaving the tortuous bend which it has deserted to be gradually filled up with snags, deposits of alluvium, and finally to be carpeted with a vegetable growth. In some cases, as the stream works away to the eastward or westward, it remains an inland crescent-shaped lake, numbers of which are to be found in the wilderness many miles from the parent stream. ”

“ Half a mile or so above Teddington Lock—where you are quite above the low tides, which leave the mud-banks in long stretches and spoil the beauty of the splendid river; where the stream flows on evenly between its banks, only sometimes swifter and stronger, sometimes slower and more sluggish; where you may lie and listen a whole summer's day to the murmurous wash of the current among the lilies and the reeds,—there stands a house, noticeable among other houses by reason of its warm red brick, its many gables, and its wealth of creepers. ”

“ This lake was artificial, made a hundred years ago by the erection of a huge dam across the dip of the valley, so that the stream which flowed down it was thereby confined and must needs form this sheet of water before it found outlet again through the sluices. At the centre the dam is some twenty-five feet in height, and by the side of the road which crosses it clumps of rhododendrons lean out over the deep water. ”

“ The river at this point, after some hundred yards of rapid, makes a sudden turn round a rocky angle, and plunges madly into the pool itself. Very deep water lies at the head of it, but deeper still further down on the east side, where a portion of the stream flicks back again in a swift dark backwater towards the top of the pool again. It is fishable only from the western bank, for to the east, above this backwater, a great wall of black and basaltic rock, heaved up no doubt by some fault in strata, rises sheer from the river to the height of some sixty feet. ”

“ They are of all dimensions, rounded, very black, glossy like lead, and destitute of vegetation. It is an extraordinary phenomenon to see the waters of one of the largest rivers on the globe in some sort disappear. We perceived, even far from the shore, those immense blocks of granite, rising from the ground, and leaning one against another. The intervening channels in the rapids are more than twenty-five fathoms deep; and are the more difficult to be observed, as the rocks are often narrow toward their bases, and form vaults suspended over the surface of the river. ”

“ From Armboth a road turns over the moors for Watendlath and Borrowdale. It is a breezy moorland walk ending in a beautiful glen.
The road leaves the woodlands, and we cycle for some distance in full view of the water. The land is fertile meadow; a welcome change from the sterile wastes. A wood clothes the further shore; the hillside 175 in front is known as the Benn, its summit stands well out from the fellside to which, if you trouble to climb so high, you find it is attached by a narrow spine of rock. Up here the Britons of old had a fort impregnable to assault. ”

“ Bennett was all excitement and seething life. Thousands of ungainly boats, rafts and scows were waiting to be launched. Already craft were beginning to come through from Lindeman, rushing down the fierce torrent between the two lakes. From where we were camped we saw them pass. There were ugly rapids and a fang-like rock, against which many a luckless craft was piled up.
It was the most fascinating thing in the world to watch these daring Argonauts rush the rapids, to speculate whether or not they would get through. The stroke of an oar, a few feet to right or left, meant unspeakable calamity. ”