White water

“ Blue was the key-colour of the place. The sky glowed blue and cloudless; the smooth water was gentian blue; seawards there was a huge bar of sand and shingle, heaped high, and running almost the whole way across the arm of the inrushing sea; therefore whether the tide was high or low the waves broke and leaped and swirled on it, so that the sea looked like a great lake, land-locked on three sides, and bounded on the fourth by a tossing, spouting, milk-white cataract of foam, as the great breakers raged and tumbled over the bar of sand. ”

“ Above these rocks we look up the stony bed of the frantic river and meet the blue mass of a distant mountain. Rocks are picturesquely dropped about the margin. Upon one side a birch leans far out over the basin, whose polished surface brilliantly reflects the white light of its bark. One sees the print of foliage on the black water, like that of ferns and grasses upon coal; or, rather, like the most beautiful Italian mosaics—black marble inlaid with arabesques of color. The illusion is more perfect still when the yellow and scarlet of the maples is reflected, as in autumn. ”

“ The white rivers move faster and have more dissolved oxygen but are more cloudy and are thus oligophotic or 'light-poor'. (A classic white-water animal is the 'electric eel', which provides its own light.) ”

“ Here and there are amber pools and green-black eddies; here and there a length of shallows that flashes silver and gold at noon; and here is that roaring place where the river leaps a sheer fall of thirty feet in one unbroken white curve—the Veil of Flying Water. ”

“ The life of a river, like that of a human being, consists in the union of soul and body, the water and the banks. They belong together. They act and react upon each other. The stream moulds and makes the shore; hollowing out a bay here, and building a long point there; alluring the little bushes close to its side, and bending the tall slim trees over its current; sweeping a rocky ledge clean of everything but moss, and sending a still lagoon full of white arrow-heads and rosy knot-weed far back into the meadow. ”

“ In the pockets and the sloughs, we find thousands of yellow and white water-lilies, and sometimes progress is impeded by masses of creeping root-stalks which have been torn from their muddy bed by the upheaval of the ice, and now float about in great rafts, firmly anchored by the few whose extremities are still imbedded in the ooze. ”

“ One can lift up white slabs of salt in the same way as ice, and send a piece skimming across the surface, like stones on a frozen pond at home. Sometimes there are deep pools in the midst of the marshes where the white salt and the vivid blue sky combine to colour the water with the most brilliant greens and blues. Causeways built by the natives traverse the marshes, and by these alone it is possible to cross them. ”

“ We might have been able to show the lake, with its tender blue colour, here broadening nobly, there enfolding with its sparkling white arms clusters of tropic isles, or projecting long silvery tongues of blazing water into the spacious meadowy flats, curving everywhere in rounded bays, or extending along flowing shore-lines, under the shadows of impending plateau walls, and flotillas of canoes gliding over its bright bosom to give it life, and broad green bands of marsh grasses, palms, plantains, waving crops of sugar-cane, and umbrageous globes of foliage, to give beauty to its borders. ”

“ At times a faint hollow roar, as if an echo from the distant ocean, seems to fill all the air for an instant, and die mysteriously away. It is a time to commune with one’s own heart and be still: to feel how poor are artificial pleasures compared to those which are common to all—the simplest, which can be had for nothing—namely, sunshine, air, and running water, and the fair broad earth to walk upon.
Onwards. The beck widens, and rushes into a broad stony belt to join a stream hurrying down the vale from the west. I crossed, and came presently to the supposed bright green meadow. ”

“ It is a good thing the water is white, because we can make out the rocks that rise above the surface. When our eyes get quite accustomed to the dark we should certainly be able to see any figures stepping upon them or wading in the water. ”

“ Then returning to the diverging point in the path, we mount to the top of the fall. Here the scene is, if possible, wilder than below. The rock, as far as you can see, is split into a thousand crevices, and through these the river rushes to its leap. Such a river-bed you never saw before. The solid uprising portions are of all dimensions, and you step from one to the other without first feeling if they are steady. Here and there you climb, and coming to the top of the bluff you can look over and watch the water in its headlong plunge. The brown tinge contrasts beautifully with the white foam ”

“ They came there regularly every evening drawn by some need. It was as if the water floated off and set sailing thoughts which had grown stagnant on dry land, and gave to their bodies even some sort of physical relief. First, the pulse of colour flooded the bay with blue, and the heart expanded with it and the body swam, only the next instant to be checked and chilled by the prickly blackness on the ruffled waves. Then, up behind the great black rock, almost every evening spurted irregularly, so that one had to watch for it and it was a delight when it came, a fountain of white water; ”

“ When we get outside we discover that the floe has split in two not far from the tent. The Lapps, who had at once made for the highest points of our piece of ice, now shout that they can see the open sea....
“The swell is growing heavier and heavier, and the water breaking over our floe with ever-increasing force. The blocks of ice and slush, which come from the grinding of the floes together and are thrown up round the edges of our piece, do a good deal to break the violence of the waves. The worst of it is that we are being carried seawards with ominous rapidity.” ”

“ At last the pools of water were all gone, and the river flowed on as before, but its waters were now white like milk. Tall, shadowy forms every now and then rose from it, and made threatening gestures ”

“ And these tubes, the same cause continuing to operate, grow in course of ages to magnificent stalactites; and where thin, broad streams have appeared, there the draperies and wings and the great snow-fields have been fashioned. The incrustation spreads even over some of the pools: the film of water flowing in deposits its solid contents on the margin, and these, crystallizing and accumulating, advance upon the surface, as ice forms from the edge towards the centre of a pond, and in time bridge it over with a translucent sheet. ”

“ Water fixes here animal life, and human population may spread far away from the main stream, generally on the White River, which may be considered as shoreless. We go round a sand-head of the right shore from N.E. to E., and at a quarter before one o’clock to S. On the right an island, and on the shore a village; on the left several people. With a short bend we have come to the N.; go, at half-past one o’clock, to E., and immediately left to N.E. At two o’clock E., and at half-past two N. A sand-bank here protrudes itself half into the river from the left shore. ”

“ In a river, the colour of the reflected light comes to us always from the interior strata of the fluid, and not from the upper stratum.
Some celebrated naturalists, who have examined the purest waters of the glaciers, and those which flow from mountains covered with perpetual snow, where the earth is destitute of the relics of vegetation, have thought that the proper colour of water might be blue, or green. Nothing, in fact, proves, that water is by nature white; and we must always admit the presence of a colouring principle, when water viewed by reflection is coloured. ”

“ We continue S.S.E., and as the right shore goes back towards S.E., the left shore approaches [184] nearer with S.W. by S. The stream is now more than 400 paces broad; its water is still very dark, and the broad reeds, with the other aquatic plants, present such a verdant appearance, that it is quite refreshing; and they shoot forth with such vigour, that we imagine we see them growing. ”

“ The water which comes from the springs or oozes through the salt layers upon its shores constantly brings in various salts in solution, and, being rapidly evaporated under the hot sun and dry wind, there has been left, in the bed of the lake, a strong brine heavily charged with the usual chlorides and bromides—a sort of bitter "mother liquor" This fluid has become so dense as to have a remarkable power of supporting the human body ”

“ The lake lying in the angle between the left shore of the Sobàt and the right of the White Stream is connected with the former by a narrow opening, evidently prevented from closing by the hand of man. The mouth, as is the case elsewhere, is merely stopped up by reeds, to keep the fish of the lake in confinement. Our blacks shewed on this occasion what they do to catch fish when the water of these lakes is shallow, and does not reach up to a man’s middle. They disturb it with their feet, put fishing or conical baskets into it, and harpoon the large fish, who come to the top to breathe. ”

“ The gigantic American streams can alone produce a similar impression. Although the river in some places intrudes deeper than usual into the right shore, yet the limits of the inundation are always sharply cut off, whereas on the left side the water is seen continually between the dark shaded trunks of the trees, where even the lowest branches do [98] not prevent it from running on in parallel gohrs, or deserted beds of the stream, into other tracks of the river, glittering especially at noon, when it is usually calm. ”

“ If this last current of the blue river shall eventually be dammed up, its mass of water will rush with the strength of a powerful mountain torrent against the mouth of the white stream, and raise it, because its last strength is already expended, even at a moderate height of water, by the projecting rocks and the islands impeding its mouth. ”

“ A wild beach, as rugged with water-worn lumps of chalk as any lover of chaos could desire. Here the cliff jutting proudly, the white patches gleaming brightly where masses of chalk have recently fallen, and the harder portions presenting a smooth, marble-like appearance; there receding into the shade, and terminating in darksome hollows, the mouths of gullies and caverns; and everywhere broken up with buttresses, piers, and columnar projections, the bases of which are garnished with a belt of shelly incrustation, and a broad brown fringe of weed. ”

“ A bright stream is the Iser, and plenteous of trout: a water such as the angler loves, now brawling over shallows, now sleeping in hazel-fringed pools. You will pause more than once while climbing the hill beyond to scan the vale. All the greater slopes are broken up with lesser undulations—wherein much is half seen, and thickly-patched with wood; little cottages nestle everywhere among the trees, the little chapel near the summit; and here and there on the outskirts a dark ridge of firs reminds you of the melancholy miles of forest beyond. ”

“ The eyes vanished and he was gazing into the peaty pool, hearing the limpid gurgle of the sweet water—feeling the cool air stirring in his hair. Woman or pool—he knew not which was which. For both were Nature. ”

“ Let the inquiry be into the nature of whiteness. Take a piece of clear glass and a vessel of clear water, pound the glass into fine dust and agitate the water, the pulverised glass and the surface of the water will appear white; and this whiteness will have travelled from non-existence into existence. Again, take a vessel full of any liquor with froth at the top, or take snow, let the froth subside and the snow melt; the whiteness will disappear, and will have travelled from existence to non-existence. ”

“ In some of the smallest and deepest caverns which curve as they enter the cliff, you get effects of cross lights from their inner extremity, and see the glistening of the walls, which, worn smooth by the water, appear to be varnished. In all the floor rises more or less rapidly; and in one, a hundred paces deep, the rush and roar of the surge outside comes only as a gentle murmur, and a slow drip-drip from the crevices has an impressive sound there in the gloom where the entrance cannot be seen. ”

“ In almost every instance they are fed from springs beneath the surface, and the solution has been offered and quite generally believed that much of this fresh water flows in subterranean channels having their source far distant in the White Mountains. ”

“ Others taunt me with having knelt at well-curbs
Always wrong to the light, so never seeing
Deeper down in the well than where the water
Gives me back in a shining surface picture
My myself in the summer heaven, godlike
Looking out of a wreath of fern and cloud puffs.
Once, when trying with chin against a well-curb,
I discerned, as I thought, beyond the picture,
Through the picture, a something white, uncertain,
Something more of the depths—and then I lost it.
Water came to rebuke the too clear water.
One drop fell from a fern, and lo, a ripple
Shook whatever it was lay there at bottom, ”

“ We crossed the fall, climbed up the rock into another bend of the chasm, where the water makes its first plunge, unseen from below, shut in by crags that wear a sterner frown. You look up to the summit and see the water tumbling through a ring of rock, so strangely has the disruptive shock there broken the cliff. The effect both on ear and eye as the torrent breaks into spray and dashes downwards in fantastic channels, is surprisingly impressive.
Only on one side is the pass accessible, and there so steep that your hands must aid in the ascent. ”