Rivers

“ Their small, round leaves flash like mirrors in the sun, and when the river water vanishes from about their feet, they hold themselves in the sandy shallow bed of the rivers as if waiting with imperturbable faith for the return of the waters. ”

“ Throughout all its states flow these beautiful navigable rivers, which, like great arteries, receive into themselves innumerable lesser streams and brooks, and convey to all places the life and the fruits of civilisation! ”

“ See what numbers of broad and rapid rivers intersect it in their journey to the ocean, and that not a stone or a pebble is to be found on their banks, or in any part of the country, till your eye catches the hills in the interior. How beautiful and magnificent are the lakes in the heart of the forests, and how charming the forests themselves, for miles after miles on each side of the rivers! ”

“ In our last journey we toiled over bleak and barren wastes, across frozen lakes, and marshes, and rivers;—now we shall pass under the shadows of virgin forests, and float lightly upon the bosom of broad majestic streams, whose shores echo with the voices of living nature. ”

“ And if you will shut your eyes and imagine the reality back of that chart, you will see hundreds of cool, clear springs flowing successively into runs, brooks, creeks, larger streams, river branches, rivers, and finally into the great river—the reservoir of all. And everywhere the waters go there is life. The only difference between these two streams of life is in the direction. The blood flows from the largest toward the smallest; the water flows from the smallest toward the largest. Both bring life with its accompaniments of beauty and vigor and fruitfulness. ”

“ Like rivers born amidst the clouds of heaven, and lost in the deep and eternal ocean,—some in youth, rapid and short-lived torrents; some in manhood, powerful and copious rivers; and some in age, by a winding and slow course, half lost in their career, and making their exit by many sandy and shallow mouths. ”

“ At every step the traveler notices abundant streams of the purest water, gushing sometimes from the very tops of mountains, and it is in these thickly clustering springs that the great rivers of that wild labyrinth of high ridges and deep valleys find their abundant sources. ”

“ Passing wide and deep is this fair mere. From the hills and valleys round about sixty rivers fall therein, and making together one sweet water, pass swiftly by a single river to the sea. Sixty islands lie upon this water, the haunt and home of innumerable birds. ”

“ Yet these lakeful rivers are still more excitingly beautiful and impressive in their natural positions to those who have the eyes to see them as they lie imbedded in their meadows and forests and glacier-sculptured rocks. ”

“ So Earth’s rivers—we are talking of land-rivers now—gathering to themselves the multitude of lesser streams and tributaries, which in their turn have been earlier fed by an infinite number of burns and runnels in country and town, hurry downward to the Ocean, with rich presents from the Land. ”

“ The knowledge acquired is, indeed, often only that of rivers, their direction, their branches, and the various synonyms by which they are called in dialects belonging to different families of languages; but rivers reveal to us by their course the form of the surface of the earth, and are at once the nourishers of vegetation, the channels of intercourse between men, and pregnant with unknown influences on the future. ”

“ I’ve known rivers:
I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the
flow of human blood in human veins.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers. ”

“ Two ways the rivers
Leap down to different seas, and as they roll
Grow deep and still, and their majestic presence
Becomes a benefaction to the towns
They visit, wandering silently among them,
Like patriarchs old among their shining tents. ”

“ Rivers are roads which move, and which carry us whither we desire to go. ”

“ He distinguishes between the action of rivers or of fresh-water currents, torrents, storms, the melting of snow, and the work of the ocean. The rivers wear away and bear materials from the highlands to the lowlands, so that the plains are gradually elevated; ravines form and become immense valleys, and their sides form elevated crests and pass into mountain ranges. ”

“ Although all rivers, in the course of their development, follow the universal law which leads them from their source, however high, to the sea, yet there is, even in their descent, scope for exceedingly varied phenomena. ”

“ And in the fullness of time it was planted in groves, and belts, and broad, exuberant, mantling forests, with the largest, most varied, most fruitful, and most beautiful trees in the world. Bright seas made its border, with wave embroidery and icebergs; gray deserts were outspread in the middle of it, mossy tundras on the north, savannas on the south, and blooming prairies and plains; while lakes and rivers shone through all the vast forests and openings, and happy birds and beasts gave delightful animation. ”

“ A number of lakes and rivers are interspersed through its plains; while abundant springs, that are never dry, flow from the top of each rock, dashing their rills against the rugged projections of the cliffs below. ”

“ Its rivers are worthy of the mountains that give them birth; roaring, raging, impetuous, irresistible floods;dashing over precipices, and cutting through rocks; at one place breaking into streams, where one might fish for trouts ”

“ The rivers appear to run inland from the sea a part of the time, and then run from the landward into the sea for twelve hours, or an equal period, while the sea itself appears to be a subdivided river forever flowing in an elongated circle along the opposite shores. ”

“ Every brook and every creek is made up of water that falls near it, and rivers are made of the water poured into them by brooks and creeks. A river and all the streams that carry their water into it make a river system, and the land from which they drain the water is called the river basin. ”

“ When, therefore, the water rushing in descends to the place which we call the lower region, it flows through the earth into the streams there and fills them, just as men pump up water. But when again it leaves those regions and rushes hither, it again fills the rivers here, and these, when filled, flow through channels and through the earth, and having severally reached the several places to which they are journeying, they make seas, lakes, rivers, and fountains. ”

“ As valleys are made by the slow wear of streams and the action of the weather, they pass in their development through successive stages, each of which has its own characteristic features. We may therefore classify rivers and valleys according to the stage which they have reached in their life history from infancy to old age. ”

“ Two large rivers, which take their rise in mountains two or three hundred miles to the east, and run through a country unsurpassed for soil and climate, empty themselves into the harbor. The country around affords admirable timber for ship-building. ”

“ Rivers are roads which move and carry us whither we wish to go. ”

“ So thoroughly the river does its work in forming the land that, besides these crescent-shaped lakes and old rivers, there is little in view to indicate where the bed of the river lay one hundred or one thousand years ago. When the river changes its channel, by suddenly or gradually cutting through a point of land, or when one chute of an island is closed by a bar, a lake or an old river is formed ”

“ That the Country is not furnisht with many Rivers, and Waters, that rise upon the Hills: But from the bottom of the hills there are many Springs round about, both to the North, South and West; and those Waters are very wholesome, and produce Rivers, after they have run to some distance from thence. That the Air is moist, cold, foggy, thick, and heavy. ”

“ for without mountains the air could not be purified, nor the flowing of the rivers sustained, and the earth must have become for the most part plain, or stagnant marsh. ”

“ This is the typical river of which there are infinite varieties, yet every variety would, if time were given, and the land remained unchanged in level relatively to the sea, ultimately approach to the type.Adjustment of rivers to land. Movements of the land either of subsidence or elevation, changes in the land by the action of erosion in cutting back an escarpment or cutting through a col, changes in climate by affecting the rainfall and the volume of water, all tend to throw the river valley out of harmony with the actual condition of its stream. ”

“ A hundred rivers springing from one well-head upon a mountain-top above the clouds; descending, as the slope broadens, in as many directions; and varying towards the lowlands with such sinuosities, that whoever traces one stream, will find it suddenly disappearing under ground ”

“ They take the opportunity when the rivers are swelled with rains or melted snow, and tumble the trees into them, when they are carried down to the mouth of the rivers, where they are stopped by a kind of pens. ”

“ An Eastern traveller tells us that, 'in a certain river whose waters flow from Mount Caucasus into the Euxine, there arrives every year a great quantity of fish.' This information not being particularly novel in regard to most rivers, will fail to excite surprise in the mind of the reader. ”

“ When I have walked all day in vain under the torrid sun, and the world has been all trivial,—as well field and wood as highway,—then at eve the sun goes down westward, and the wind goes down with it, and the dews begin to purify the air and make it transparent, and the lakes and rivers acquire a glassy stillness, reflecting the skies, the reflex of the day. ”

“ Waves, currents, and eddies are much liker each other, everywhere, than either land or vegetation. Rivers and lakes, indeed, differ widely from the sea, and the clear Pacific from the angry Northern ocean ”

“ The rivers just fit their own particular beds: the latter occupy the lowest grounds, and get broader and deeper as they advance; pebbles, gravel, and sand all occupy the best teleological situations, &c., &c. ”

“ It has longer rivers xxxi and more of them, and they are muddier and deeper, and run faster, and rise higher, and make more noise, and fall lower, and do more damage than anybody else’s rivers. It has more lakes, and they are bigger and deeper, and clearer, and wetter than those of any other country. ”

“ And here, too, one learns that the world, though made, is yet being made; that this is still the morning of creation; that mountains long conceived are now being born, channels traced for coming rivers, basins hollowed for lakes; ”

“ Ill habits gather by unseen degrees,
As brooks make rivers, rivers run to seas. ”

“ Your lips are for songs about rivers in the morning and lakes at twilight. ”

“ There are also many other names for winds derived from localities or from the squalls which sweep from rivers or down mountains. ”

“ The sediments of the past are many
miles in collective thickness: yet the feeble silt of the rivers
built them all from base to summit. ”

“ He who hears the rippling of rivers in these degenerate days will not utterly despair. ”

“ God—it is but a few moments since we went through it ourselves—they gain on us—but the river is not far—speed on—bend forward, and use the spur—a few minutes more close pushing, and the river is in sight. Kill the beasts—no matter—but make the river. ”

“ In valley drift we meet commonly with the bones of quadrupeds which graze on plains bordering rivers. ”

“ DESERT POOLS I LOVE too much; I am a river
Surging with spring that seeks the sea,
I am too generous a giver,
Love will not stoop to drink of me.
His feet will turn to desert places
Shadowless, reft of rain and dew,
Where stars stare down with sharpened faces
From heavens pitilessly blue.
And there at midnight sick with faring,
He will stoop down in his desire
To slake the thirst grown past all bearing
In stagnant water keen as fire. ”