River navigation

“ The necessities of river navigation require steamboats and barges to pass through narrow and crooked channels, and to vanture on very shallow water, a water which is constantly varying in its depth, and a channel which often changes its course in a few days very materially. The consequence of this is that both steamboats and barges often get aground temporarily and are soon got off and resume their voyage. Often they rub the bottom of the river for many feet on crossing a sand-bar at low water, and pass on without injury or interruption. ”

“ Rivers have always been the great intermediaries between land and sea, for in the ocean all find their common destination. Until the construction of giant steamers in recent years, sea navigation has always passed without break into river navigation. ”

“ To crown the whole, where can a country be pointed out which possesses such an extent of internal navigation? A chain of river navigation and navigable inland seas, which, with the canals recently constructed, gives to the countries bordering on them all the advantages of an extended sea-coast, with a greatly diminished risk of loss from shipwreck! ”

“ The mouth of a large river system is the converging point of many lines of inland and maritime navigation. The interests of commerce, especially in its earlier periods of development, demand that the contact here of river and sea be extensive as possible. Nature suggests the way to fulfill this requirement. The sluggish lowland current of a river, on approaching sea level, throws out distributaries that reach the coast at various points and form a network of channels, which can be deepened and rendered permanent by canalization. ”

“ It is not easy to describe the labour of such navigation. We must prevent the waves from dashing the boats against the cliffs. Sometimes, where the river is swift, we must put a bight of rope about a rock, to prevent her being snatched from us by a wave; but where the plunge is too great, or the chute too swift, we must let her leap, and catch her below, or the undertow will drag her under the falling water, and she sinks. ”

“ In water transport the method of propelling the vessel employed is of great importance. In river navigation it is natural to allow the boat to drift with the current, and the use of a pole to steer with would naturally suggest its use as a paddle or oar in order to move against the current. In North America up till the appearance of the white man, the aborigines had not got past the paddle stage, in spite of the fact that they were very skilful navigators, and had a considerable variety of vessels. ”

“ Various far-seeing, patriotic and enterprising individuals took a leading part in pioneering the movement in favour of improved river navigation which, for a period of about 100 years—until, that is, the advent of the canal era—was to be developed with much zeal and energy, though not always with conspicuous success. ”

“ The division of the whole length of a river into the three courses—the upper, middle, and lower—and the proportionate share which each of these bears to the whole, depends upon the height at which the source stands above the mouth. The greater or less extent of the transition grades, and the greater or less extent of navigable waters, also depend on the same. The upper course has, as a general rule, too many hinderances to be very valuable for navigation; it is, at best, adapted only to boats. The more united and deeper middle course offers facilities for vessels of considerable draught ”

“ Scarcely a day passes without fresh evidences of the truth of this proposition. The river, as well as the sea-going steamers, are generally built with reference to speed and lightness, coupled with smallness of draft of water, and hence, in case of touching the ground, or of violent storms, it is found that if one portion of the frame gives way, the breaking up of the entire structure follows with a rapidity that is but too well calculated to show the slight manner in which these vessels are constructed. ”

“ Fourteen authenticated instances of use in a century and a half by explorers and trappers, coupled with general historical references to the river as a water route for the early fur traders and their supplies in pirogues and Durham or flat-bottomed craft similar to the keelboats of the New, sufficed upon that phase in the case of the DesPlaines. [55] Nor is lack of commercial traffic a bar to a conclusion of navigability where personal or private use by boats demonstrates the availability of the stream for the simpler types of commercial navigation. ”

“ The navigation also being very properly left free, the river is constantly covered with numerous canoes, generally hollowed out from the trunks of trees. The boatmen brave the most tempestuous weather; and, though often driven several leagues out of their course, are scarcely ever wrecked. Even in winter, when they must encounter blocks of ice, with which the channel is encumbered, they contrive with ropes and iron-pointed poles to raise their vessels upon the surface of the masses, and drag them along till they find open water on which to launch it. ”

“ As the dividing channels of the lower course point to the feasibility of amplifying the connection with the ocean highway, so the spreading branches of a river's source, which approach other head waters on a low divide, suggest the extension of inland navigation by the union of two such drainage systems through canals. Where the rivers of a country radiate from a relatively low central watershed, as from the Central Plateau of France and the Valdai Hills of Russia, nature offers conditions for extensive linking of inland waterways. ”

“ Persons accustomed to the navigation of the Missouri and the Mississippi also below the mouth of this river, uniformly take the precaution to load their vessels heavyest in the bow when they ascend the stream in order to avoid the danger incedent to runing foul of the concealed timber which lyes in great quantities in the beds of these rivers. ”

“ The improvements that have been carried out for the purpose of opening up the navigation of the river Tees, although less considerable than those carried out for some of the larger rivers of Great Britain, are yet entitled to take rank as among the most notable river engineering achievements of the century. ”

“ This route is on prairie-land the whole distance, so that it appears to me, by removing the turf a sufficient width, and damming up the old channel, the whole river in a short time would wash its way through, thereby curtailing the distance and increasing the velocity of the current very considerably, while there would be no timber on the banks to obstruct its navigation in future; and being nearly straight, the timber which might float in at the head would be apt to go clear through. ”

“ There is a narrow neck of land separating the river from the ocean, through which an artificial channel might be opened without a great deal of labor, giving a much better entrance than across the present rocky bar of the outlet to the sea. Should the resources of the country warrant this proceeding, it looks as if it would be entirely practicable. After passing the bar the river is deep, and well adapted to navigation for eight or ten miles, up to the mouth of the Rio Prata, and thence the last-named is said to be navigable for twelve miles. ”

“ There can be little doubt that it is susceptible of navigation above and below by the largest class of river steamers, and that the rapids themselves may in the higher stages of water be ascended by the American high-pressure steamers which navigate our Western rivers, drawing, as they do in low stages of the Ohio and Missouri, but sixteen to eighteen inches. ”

“ Eventually, large rivers, under favourable conditions, often furnish important natural highways for inland navigation in the lower portion of their course, as, for instance, the Rhine, the Danube and the Mississippi; and works are only required for preventing changes in the course of the stream, for regulating its depth, and especially for fixing the low-water channel and concentrating the flow in it, so as to increase as far as practicable the navigable depth at the lowest stage of the water-level. ”

“ In the wildest parts of the best rivers the channel is too narrow for oars, or, if wide, it [2] is too shallow for a row-boat; and the tortuous passages, the rocks and banks, the weeds and snags, the milldams, barriers, fallen trees, rapids, whirlpools, and waterfalls that constantly occur on a river winding among hills, make those very parts where the scenery is wildest and best to be quite unapproachable in an open boat, for it would be swamped by the sharp waves, or upset over the sunken rocks which it is utterly impossible for a steersman to see. ”

“ I saw men and women fishing in the broad river, and to my amazement found their boats were literally rafts—wooden logs bound together by ropes or thongs of leather and fibre. Hardly had I perceived this before the thought and hope flashed through my mind that on some such vehicle of transit I could trust myself to the stream, and that it was most likely that these hardy highlanders could give me the information I now needed as to the channel, direction, debouchment, and navigableness of the noble water in its course to the coast. ”

“ Even in the most favourable conditions of tide or water supply, the boats had to be dragged up and down the stream by men, who did the work of beasts of burden until the construction of the rival waterway led to the navigation proprietors employing horses or mules instead. ”

“ Several years ago the whole distance from our homes to the interior was traveled by water, on which occasions heavy-laden boats were taken up these rivers and streams, and across the lakes, an operation which was both hazardous and laborious, particularly where the swift current of rapids was to be overcome, and when it became necessary to carry the boat and cargo around impassable falls—a frequent occurrence, the river in some places being nothing but one continuous succession of rapids for miles. ”

“ From the books which they had read the boys had learned that there is, if anything, more fun in cruising on a narrow stream than in sailing on broad rivers; that running rapids is a delightful sport, and that streams should always be descended instead of ascended in a canoe. They therefore wanted to discover a narrow stream with safe and easy rapids, and also to cruise on some lake or wide river where they could test the canoes under sail and under paddle in rough water. ”

“ The facilities of trade and intercourse between the different sections of the Valley, are now superior to most countries on earth, and are increasing every year. And no country on earth admits of such indefinite improvement either by land or water. More than twenty thousand miles of actual steamboat navigation, with several hundred miles of canal navigation, constructed or commenced, attest the truth of this statement. ”

“ Glancing water, brilliant sun, a light boat, and a light heart, all your baggage on board, and on a fast current,—who would exchange this for any [21] diligence or railway, or steamboat, or horse? A pleasant stream was enough to satisfy at this early period of the voyage, for the excitement of rocks and rapids had not yet become a charm.
It is good policy, too, that a quiet, easy, respectable sort of river like the Meuse should be taken in the earlier stage of a water tour, when there is novelty enough in being on a river at all. ”

“ Since water covers three-fourths of the earth's surface and permits the land-masses to rise only as islands here and there, it presents to man for his nautical ventures three times the area that he commands for his terrestrial habitat. On every side, the break of the waves and the swell of the tides block his wanderings, unless he has learned to make the water carry him to his distant goal. Spacially, therefore, the problem and the task of navigation is the most widespread and persistent in the history of mankind. ”

“ Lake of the 'Argonaut,' about fifteen feet is the limit of visibility in our Northern waters, and about twice that in Southern. Submarine navigation is like navigation in the densest sort of a fog. High speed under water is just as possible mechanically as upon the surface. ”

“ We see the high, steel cable strung across the river, with the running block and gang ropes connecting it with the side-railed flat barge or ferry. These floats are often propelled across stream by the force of the current. Just as a ship makes headway by the side wind running off her sails obliquely, so does a boat cross a stream by the action of the tide, if care is taken to have the boat’s head turned partly against the current. ”

“ A high tide coming in at night submerges the canoe and cargo lying on the river shore; and for the following days so strong is the current that 15 miles have to be tramped on foot before New-Post comes in sight. To walk 15 miles is nothing in itself, but to walk 15 miles, up to the waist in cold water, piercing one’s feet with the sharp cornered pebbles of the river bottom, and to drag along a boat and its effects through the opposing stream, all this is something. ”

“ There are some great streams which are of first magnitude in all their characteristics—rivers which drain millions of square miles in their course to the sea. The number of such is small, however; there are scarcely fifty on the whole globe. Besides these, there is a large number of rivers much shorter, and of much less volume, but not deficient in the attributes which give a stream value to man, and which serve to mediate between highlands and lowlands, to fulfill the needs of navigation and to drain regions of more or less magnitude. ”