Chapter I: Front Matter (1)

Great Rivers of the World

FAMOUS MARVELS
AND MASTERPIECES
OF THE WORLD

As Seen and Described by Great Writers

Collected and Edited by
ESTHER SINGLETON

Famous Paintings
Great Pictures
Modern Paintings
Great Portraits
Wonders of the World
Wonders of Nature
Famous Women
Romantic Castles and Palaces
Turrets, Towers and Temples
Historic Buildings of America
Historic Landmarks of America
Great Rivers of the World
Famous Sculpture
Famous Cathedrals

Fourteen volumes in all. Profusely illustrated. Each sold separately.

You can get any of the series where you bought this book and at the same price.

Great Rivers of the World

As Seen and Described
By Famous Writers

COLLECTED AND EDITED BY
ESTHER SINGLETON

_With Numerous Illustrations_

NEW YORK
DODD, MEAD & COMPANY

Copyright, 1908, by
DODD, MEAD & COMPANY

_Published, November, 1908_

Preface

Rivers possess so many varied attractions and have so many claims on the attention of the student of science and history, the pleasure-seeker, the traveller, the poet and the painter, that no apology need be offered for gathering into one volume selections from the works of those who have described some of the most famous streams of the world. Lyell says: “Rivers are the irrigators of the earth’s surface, adding alike to the beauty of the landscape and the fertility of the soil: they carry off impurities and every sort of waste _débris_; and when of sufficient volume, they form the most available of all channels of communication with the interior of continents. They have ever been things of vitality and beauty to the poet, silent monitors to the moralist, and agents of comfort and civilization to all mankind.”

Thoreau says: “The Mississippi, the Ganges and the Nile, those journeying atoms from the Rocky Mountains, the Himmaleh and Mountains of the Moon, have a kind of personal importance in the annals of the world--the heavens are not yet drained over their sources, but the Mountains of the Moon still send their annual tribute to the Pasha without fail, as they did to the Pharaohs, though he must collect the rest of his revenue at the point of the sword. Rivers must have been the guides which conducted the footsteps of the first travellers. They are the constant lure, when they flow by our doors, to distant enterprise and adventure, and, by a natural impulse, the dwellers on their banks will at length accompany their currents to the lowlands of the globe, or explore at their invitation the interior of continents. They are the natural highways of all nations, not only levelling the ground and removing obstacles from the path of the traveller, quenching his thirst, and bearing him on their bosoms, but conducting him through the most interesting scenery, the most populous portions of the globe, and where the animal and vegetable kingdoms attain their greatest perfection.”

In the following pages little will be found dealing with the material blessings bestowed on mankind by the agency of rivers. The average reader is more interested in the antiquarian and legendary lore of the sources, rapids, banks and islands of a famous stream. Length of course and volume of water are matters of no importance to lovers of the picturesque, the venerable, or the romantic. Therefore the literature of the Shannon is more fascinating than that of the Amazon, and the Jordan attracts more pilgrims than the Volga. Small streams like the Wye, the Yarrow, and the Oise consequently find a place among these celebrated rivers.

E. S.

_New York, October, 1908._

Contents

THE RHINE _Victor Hugo_ 1

THE SEINE _A. Bowman Blake_ 8

THE GANGES _Sir William Hunter_ 19

MORNING ON THE GANGES _Pierre Loti_ 24

THE COLORADO _Henry Gannett_ 28

THE AVON _John Wilson Croker_ 34

DOWN THE ST. LAWRENCE _Charles Dickens_ 46

THE TIGRIS _George Rawlinson_ 52

THE OISE _Robert Louis Stevenson_ 55

THE HUDSON _Esther Singleton_ 65

THE TIBER _Strother A. Smith_ 76

THE SHANNON _Arthur Shadwell Martin_ 87

THE DANUBE _I. Bowes_ 94

THE NIGER _J. Hampden Jackson_ 101

THE AMAZON _Joseph Jones_ 107

THE YANGTSE CHIANG _W. R. Carles_ 113

THE THAMES _Charles Dickens, Jr._ 122

THE CONNECTICUT _Timothy Dwight_ 131

MOSEL _F. Warre Cornish_ 138

THE IRRAWADDY _Emily A. Richings_ 144

THE CLYDE _Robert Walker_ 155

THE VOLGA _Elisée Reclus_ 162

THE CONGO _J. Howard Reed_ 169

THE MACKENZIE RIVER _William Ogilvie_ 177

THE LOIRE _I. Victor Hugo_ 185
_II. Honoré de Balzac_ 189

THE POTOMAC _Esther Singleton_ 191

THE EUPHRATES _George Rawlinson_ 197

THE WYE _A. R. Quinton_ 201

THE INDIAN RIVER _L. C. Bryan_ 208

THE NILE _I. J. Howard Reed_ 213
_II. Isaac Taylor_ 219

THE DON _Elisée Reclus_ 223

THE COLUMBIA _J. Boddam-Whetham_ 228

THE PO _George G. Chisholm_ 235

THE MENAM _Mrs. Unsworth_ 241

THE MERRIMACK _Henry D. Thoreau_ 249

THE YEN-E-SAY _Henry Seebohm_ 254

THE YARROW _John MacWhirter_ 263

THE MISSISSIPPI _Alexander D. Anderson_ 272

THE ZAMBESI _Henry Drummond_ 280

THE URUGUAY _Ernest William White_ 286

THE TWEED _Sir Thomas Dick Lauder_ 293

NIAGARA _John Tyndall_ 304

THE NIAGARA RIVER _G. K. Gilbert_ 312

THE MEUSE _Esther Singleton_ 316

THE RHONE _Angus B. Reach_ 321

THE YUKON _William Ogilvie_ 328

THE JORDAN _Andrew Robert Fausset_ 338

THE CONCORD _Henry D. Thoreau_ 343

THE TAGUS _Arthur Shadwell Martin_ 350

THE INDUS _Edward Balfour_ 354

Illustrations

THE RHINE _Frontispiece_

THE SEINE 8

THE GANGES 20

THE COLORADO 28

THE AVON 34

THE ST. LAWRENCE 46

THE HUDSON 66

THE TIBER 76

THE SHANNON 88

THE DANUBE 94

THE THAMES 122

THE CONNECTICUT 132

THE IRRAWADDY 144

THE CLYDE 156

THE VOLGA 162

THE CONGO 170

THE LOIRE 186

THE POTOMAC 192

THE WYE 202

THE INDIAN 208

THE NILE 214

THE DON 224

THE COLUMBIA 228

THE PO 236

THE MENAM 242

THE MERRIMACK 250

THE YARROW 264

THE MISSISSIPPI 272

THE ZAMBESI 280

THE TWEED 294

THE NIAGARA 304

THE MEUSE 316

THE RHONE 322

THE JORDAN 338

THE CONCORD 344

THE TAGUS 350

THE RHINE

VICTOR HUGO

I love rivers; they do more than bear merchandise--ideas float along their surface. Rivers, like clarions, sing to the ocean of the beauty of the earth, the fertility of plains, and the splendour of cities.

Of all rivers, I prefer the Rhine. It is now a year, when passing the bridge of boats at Kehl, since I first saw it. I remember that I felt a certain respect, a sort of admiration, for this old, this classic stream. I never think of rivers--those great works of Nature, which are also great in history,--without emotion.

I remember the Rhone at Valserine; I saw it in 1825, in a pleasant excursion to Switzerland, which is one of the sweet, happy recollections of my early life. I remember with what noise, with what ferocious bellowing, the Rhone precipitated itself into the gulf whilst the frail bridge upon which I was standing was shaking beneath my feet. Ah! well! since that time, the Rhone brings to my mind the idea of a tiger,--the Rhine, that of a lion.

The evening on which I saw the Rhine for the first time, I was impressed with the same idea. For several minutes I stood contemplating this proud and noble river--violent, but not furious; wild, but still majestic. It was swollen, and was magnificent in appearance, and was washing its yellow mane, or, as Boileau says, its “slimy beard,” the bridge of boats. Its two banks were lost in the twilight, and though its roaring was loud, still there was tranquillity.

Yes, the Rhine is a noble river--feudal, republican, imperial--worthy, at the same time, of France and Germany. The whole history of Europe is combined within its two great aspects--in this flood of the warrior and of the philosopher--in this proud stream, which causes France to bound with joy, and by whose profound murmurings Germany is bewildered in dreams.

The Rhine is unique; it combines the qualities of every river. Like the Rhone, it is rapid; broad, like the Loire; encased, like the Meuse; serpentine, like the Seine; limpid and green, like the Somme; historical, like the Tiber; royal, like the Danube; mysterious, like the Nile; spangled with gold, like an American river; and, like a river of Asia, abounding with phantoms and fables.

Before the commencement of History, perhaps before the existence of man, where the Rhine now is there was a double chain of volcanos, which on their extinction left heaps of lava and basalt lying parallel, like two long walls. At the same epoch the gigantic crystallizations formed the primitive mountains; the enormous alluvions of which the secondary mountains consist were dried up; the frightful heap, which is now cold, and snow accumulated on them, from which two great streams issued, the one--flowing towards the north, crossed the plains, encountered the sides of the extinguished volcanos, and emptied itself into the ocean; the other, taking its course westward, fell from mountain to mountain, flowed along the side of the block of extinguished volcanos, which is now Ardâche, and was finally lost in the Mediterranean. The first of those inundations is the Rhine, and the second the Rhone.

From historical records we find that the first people who took possession of the banks of the Rhine were the half-savage Celts, who were afterwards named Gauls by the Romans. When Rome was in its glory, Cæsar crossed the Rhine, and shortly afterwards the whole of the river was under the jurisdiction of his empire. When the Twenty-second Legion returned from the siege of Jerusalem, Titus sent it to the banks of the Rhine, where it continued the work of _Martius Agrippa_. The conquerors required a town to join Melibocus to Taunus; and Moguntiacum, begun by Martius, was founded by the Legion, built by Trajan, and embellished by Adrian. Singular coincidence! and which we must note in passing. This Twenty-second Legion brought with it Crescentius, who was first that carried the Word of God into the Rhingau, and founded the new religion. God ordained that these ignorant men, who had pulled down the last stone of His temple upon the Jordan, should lay the first of another upon the banks of the Rhine. After Trajan and Adrian came Julian, who erected a fortress upon the confluence of the Rhine and the Moselle; then Valentinian, who built a number of castles. Thus in a few centuries, Roman colonies, like an immense chain, linked the whole of the Rhine.

At length the time arrived when Rome was to assume another aspect. The incursions of the Northern hordes were eventually too frequent and too powerful for Rome; so, about the Sixth Century, the banks of the Rhine were strewed with Roman ruins, as at present with feudal ones.

Charlemagne cleared away the rubbish, built fortresses, and opposed the German hordes; but notwithstanding his desire to do more, Rome died, and the physiognomy of the Rhine was changed.

Already, as I before mentioned, an unperceived germ was sprouting in the Rhingau. Religion, that divine eagle, began to spread its wings, and deposited among the rocks an egg that contained the germ of a world. St. Apollinaire, following the example of Crescentius, who, in the year 70 preached the Word of God at Taunus, visited Rigomagum. St. Martin, Bishop of Tours, catechized Confluentia; St. Materne, before visiting Tongres, resided at Cologne. At Trèves, Christians began to suffer the death of martyrdom, and their ashes were swept away by the wind; but these were not lost, for they became seeds, which were germinating in the fields during the passage of the barbarians, although nothing at that time was seen of them.

After an historical period the Rhine became linked with the marvellous. Where the noise of man is hushed, Nature lends a tongue to the nest of birds, causes the caves to whisper, and the thousand voices of solitude to murmur; where historical facts cease, imagination gives life to shadows and realities to dreams. Fables took root, grew, and blossomed in the voids of History, like weeds and brambles in the crevices of a ruined palace.

Civilization, like the sun, has its nights and its days, its plenitudes and its eclipses; now it disappears, but soon returns.

As soon as civilization again dawned upon Taunus, there were upon the borders of the Rhine a whole host of legends and fabulous stories. Populations of mysterious beings, who inhabited the now dismantled castles, had held communion with the _belles filles_ and _beaux chevaliers_ of the place. Spirits of the rocks; black hunters, crossing the thickets upon stags with six horns; the maid of the black fen; the six maidens of the red marshes; Wodan, the god with ten hands; the twelve black men; the raven that croaked its song; the devil who placed his stone at Teufelstein and his ladder Teufelsleiter, and who had the effrontery to preach publicly at Gernsbach, near the Black Forest, but, happily, the Word of God was heard at the other side of the stream; the demon, Urian, who crossed the Rhine at Dusseldorf, having upon his back the banks that he had taken from the sea-shore, with which he intended to destroy Aix-la-Chapelle, but being fatigued with his burden, and deceived by an old woman, he stupidly dropped his load at the imperial city, where that bank is at present pointed out, and bears the name of Loosberg. At that epoch, which for us was plunged into a penumbra, when magic lights were sparkling here and there, when the rocks, the woods, the valleys, were tenanted by apparitions; mysterious encounters, infernal castles, melodious songs sung by invisible songstresses; the frightful bursts of laughter emanating from mysterious beings,--these, with a host of other adventures, shrouded in impossibility, and holding on by the heel of reality, are detailed in the legends.

At last these phantoms disappear as dawn bursts in upon them. Civilization again resumed its sway, and fiction gave place to fact. The Rhine assumed another aspect: abbeys and convents increased; churches were built along the banks of the river. The ecclesiastic princes multiplied the edifices in the Rhingau, as the prefects of Rome had done before them.

The Sixteenth Century approached; in the Fourteenth the Rhine witnessed the invention of artillery; and on its bank, at Strasbourg, a printing-office was first established. In 1400 the famous cannon, fourteen feet in length, was cast at Cologne; and in 1472 Vindelin de Spire printed his Bible. A new world was making its appearance; and, strange to say, it was upon the banks of the Rhine that those two mysterious tools with which God unceasingly works out the civilization of man,--the catapult and the book--war and thought,--took a new form.

The Rhine, in the destinies of Europe, has a sort of providential signification. It is the great moat which divides the north from the south. The Rhine for thirty ages, has seen the forms and reflected the shadows of almost all the warriors who tilled the old continent with that share which they call sword. Cæsar crossed the Rhine in going to the south; Attila crossed it when descending to the north. It was here that Clovis gained the battle of Tolbiac; and that Charlemagne and Napoleon figured. Frederick Barbarossa, Rudolph of Hapsbourg, and Frederick the First, were great, victorious, and formidable when here. For the thinker, who is conversant with History, two great eagles are perpetually hovering over the Rhine--that of the Roman legions, and that of the French regiments. The Rhine--that noble flood, which the Romans named _Rhenus superbus_, bore at one time upon its surface bridges of boats, over which the armies of Italy, Spain, and France poured into Germany, and which, at a later date, were made use of by the hordes of barbarians when rushing into the ancient Roman world: at another, on its surface it floated peaceably the fir-trees of Murg and St. Gall, the porphyry and the marble of Bale, the salt of Karlshall, the leather of Stromberg, the quicksilver of Lansberg, the wine of Johannisberg, the slates of Coab, the cloth and earthenware of Wallendar, the silks and linens of Cologne. It majestically performs its double function of flood of war and flood of peace, having, without interruption, upon the ranges of hills which embank the most notable portion of its course, oak-trees on the one side and vine-trees on the other--signifying strength and joy.

For Homer the Rhine existed not; for Virgil it was only a frozen stream--_Frigiora Rheni_; for Shakespeare it was the “beautiful Rhine”; for us it is, and will be to the day when it shall become the grand question of Europe, a picturesque river, the resort of the unemployed of Ems, of Baden, and of Spa.

THE SEINE

A. BOWMAN BLAKE

Few persons outside of France have any acquaintance with, or knowledge of, the rare beauties of Seine scenery. The river has thus far escaped the vulgarity of becoming a common tourist’s high-road. The general impression is current that the Seine, being destitute of the legendary romance of the vine-clad Rhine, the vivid and somewhat spectacular scenic effects of the Italian lakes, or even the lawn-like finish of the Thames, offers no attractions to either amateur or tourist. This opinion only proves the falsity of opinion based upon superficial knowledge. From the artistic point of view, perhaps, no other one river in Europe possesses a character of scenery so preëminently beautiful, or so replete with the charm of contrast, or rich in variety; for the picturesque portions of the noble river are by no means confined to the grandeur and wildness of the Fontainebleau forests, or of the animated quays and crumbling Mediæval houses of the ancient city of Rouen. To one in search of scenes which shall unite the charms of beautiful river scenery with the added note of pastoral and village rusticity, almost every turning of the river will reveal a mine of wealth. It is a characteristic of the scenery of the Seine that it is eminently sketchable at almost every point. For it is more than a purely picturesque, it is an essentially poetic river. A conclusive proof of its superiority in point of artistic resources and suggestivement is, perhaps, that no other European river scenery has had so overwhelming an influence upon modern Art. During the past forty years, in which the Seine and its tributaries have been the principal camping-ground of the best French landscape-painters, the peculiarities of its scenery, and the features of its rustic life, have formed the taste, and developed a wholly original mode of treatment of _genre_ and landscape in the modern French school. The two principal characteristics of the scenery of the Seine are its naturalness, and its possessing in the highest degree that individuality which marks its landscapes as distinctively French. The Seine could never be mistaken at any point for other than a French river. The Parisian masters, in transferring to their canvasses the peculiarities of the river and shore aspects, have produced a school of landscape as essentially national in character as that which marks the Dutch and Flemish masterpieces of two hundred years ago. The low wide meadows, the stately poplars, the reedy shores, and the delicate atmosphere which veils the jumble of roofs, and the quaint towers and turrets that are lanced from the Seine shores, have already become as familiar features of modern French landscape, as the cone-shaped hills of Flanders and the flat windmill-dotted fields of Holland, which makes the character of the landscape in Dutch and Flemish canvasses.

I have spoken of the naturalness of the Seine landscape. It is this which makes its lasting charm. Along these banks Nature neither rises to the sublime nor does she appear in too wild or dishevelled a state. There is a happy blending of the cultivated and the uncultivated, of course tamed and yet enjoying the wilder _abandon_ of freedom. Nowhere are the scenes too grand or too wide for the pencil; the hills suggest, but do not attain, the majestic; the wide, flat fields and the long stretches of meadows are broken into possible distances by a gently sloping ground, or an avenue of tall poplars. The villages and farm-houses dotted along its banks wear a thoroughly rustic air; the villas and _châteaux_ crowning its low hills become naturally a part of the landscape by their happy adaptation, architecturally, to the character of their surroundings; while the not infrequent ruins of monastery or ancient castle group charmingly with the fluffy foliage and dense shrubbery.

Perhaps the impressionist’s most ideal landscape would be found among the villages of the upper Seine, that part of the Seine which flows between Fontainebleau and Rouen, as beyond Rouen the river takes on a stronger and bolder character both in its breadth and in the quality of its scenery.

First in point of beauty among the villages contiguous to Fontainebleau, is Grètz, a little village not directly upon the Seine, but upon its tributary, the Loing. Grètz can be reached in an hour’s drive from the town or palace of Fontainebleau. This charming village must have grown here, close to the low sweet level of the winding river’s banks, with a view to its being sketched. Not a feature necessary to the making of a picture is wanting. The village street lies back some distance from the shore, the backs of the houses fronting on the river, the village and river life made one by the straggling rose, fruit, and vegetable gardens running down between their high stone-wall enclosures to the very edges of the swiftly flowing streams. As one views the village from the mid-stream, one has the outlined irregularity of the village houses limned against the sky. To the right, between the tall grenadier-like poplars, or the higher branches of the willow, rises a beautiful group of old buildings; the blue spaces of the sky are seen through the arches and ruins of the old _château_ of La Reine Blanche, that queen having made, centuries ago, Grètz her dwelling place. The massive, simple lines of the castle’s Norman tower contrast finely with the belfry of the still more ancient church close beside it, the dark façades of these old buildings being relieved by the gay touches of colour upon the adjacent houses. A queer old bridge appears to leap directly from the very courtyard of the _château_ to the opposite shore, and on the bridge is constantly moving some picture of rustic life, peasants with loads of grapes or fagots, a herd of oxen laboriously dragging the teeming hay-cart, a group of chattering villagers, or the shepherd leading his flock to richer pastures. The river banks themselves are not wanting in the beauty of human activity. In the gardens, as our boat drifted along the banks, were half-a-dozen bent old women weeding, sowing, and plucking. Farther down, beyond the bridge, is the washerwomen’s stand, the bare arms, short skirts, and gay kerchiefs of these sturdy peasant women, with the bits of colour their home-spun linens yield, making delightful contrasts with the delicate arabesques which light foliage made against the sky.

The upper valley of the Seine, that portion of the river lying between Paris and Rouen, seems at a first glance to be a country as sterile in artistic resources as it is interesting to the average tourist. But the French artist, so far from finding the flat, wide stretches of field and meadow, the scanty foliage, and the scattered group of farm-houses which border the river banks, either too prosaic or too trite for his pencil, has discovered from a close study of this apparently common-place valley scenery a new feature of landscape beauty. This feature has been the present original treatment of the flat surfaces of ground and of large sunlit spaces. The character of all this valley scenery may be summed up in a few words; tilled fields running down to the water’s edge; wild uncultivated fields and rank dank meadows, their flatness broken here and there by a clustering group of low shrubbery, by rows of the slim, straight French poplars, or an avenue of stunted, bulbous-trunk willows, with their straight, reed-like branches. The entire landscape has but two lines, the horizontality of the meadows and the perpendicular uprising of the trees, except that far off in the distance run the waving outlines of the hills of Normandy. Such is the aspect of the country in which some of the first among contemporaneous French artists have found new sources of inspiration. Those wide, sunlit meadows, breathing the rich luxuriance of nature in undisturbed serenity; the golden spaces of the air shimmering like some netted tissue between tree and tree; the shadows cast by a single tree across the length of the field; an intimate knowledge and study of this landscape have taught the French brush the secret of its power in painting a flat picture, and in wresting from sunlight the glory of its gold. The peculiar qualities of the atmosphere at certain seasons of the year make the Seine valley entrancing, especially to Art Students. In the spring, nothing can exceed the delicacy, purity and fineness of the colouring of the foliage, and the tones of light are marvellous in their dainty refinement and suggestiveness. Nature seems to be making a sketch in outline of a picture, which summer is to fill in, so pure are the outlines of foliage and landscape in that wonderful medium of delicately coloured ether. In summer, sunlight fairly drenches the fields. Autumn colours, also, here seem richer, firmer, more glowing than in other parts of France, and the October twilights in their brilliance and duration approach an American tint.

The first breaks in the monotony of the valley scenery are the approaches to, and the immediate suburbs about, Rouen. The river banks just below are particularly picturesque. The river between Rouen and La Bouille assumes a character different from that which marks it above a city. It was my special good fortune to traverse this portion sometime before sunrise. We left the city behind us masked in grey mist, only the iron _flèche_ of the cathedral piercing the cottony wrappings. On the motionless Seine not a ripple was astir, and the morning fog held leaves and trees in a close, breathless embrace. But at Croisset, with the shooting of the sun above the horizon came the melting hues and freshening breath of morning. As the clouds, slowly rolled apart, gave us glimpses of the magnificent panorama of Rouen set in its circlet of hills, the effect was that of the gradual lifting of a drop-curtain upon some fine scenic landscape. The river itself was a jewel of colour, reflecting the faintly tinted shipping along the wharves, the rich emerald of the trees, and the shadowy grasses along the shore. The steamer on its way steers in and out among a hundred little islands which give a magical effect of enchantment, so fairy-like and exquisite are their shapes and forms. With Croisset, Hautot, Loquence, and Sahurs, the majesty of the Rouen quays, wharves, spires, and cathedral towers gives place to the richer, softer beauty of rural village loveliness. But the most beautiful picture greeted our eyes as we approached La Bouille, which is picturesquely set against the greenery of a hilly back-ground, its bright, light-coloured houses so close to the water’s edge that the river was like a broken rainbow of colour, reflecting their tints in its ripples. Across the river was a magnificent expanse of meadow and tilled field, with a poplar now and then to serve as a sentinel guarding the bursting grain. The banks of the river are delightfully diversified by clusters of old thatched farm-houses, spreading fishing-nets, and old boats moored in tiny creeks. As we passed the last of the village houses, there were some wonderful effects of light and colour; all the confused indecision of light scurrying clouds piled above the meadows; the uncertain vagueness of a mist rolling still, like the skirts of a fleecy robe, over the distant river bends; and immediately above us the warmth, brilliance, and goldenness of sunrise in its early splendour. Couched amidst the mysterious shade of some dense foliage was the bending form of an old woman, filling her pitcher at the river-side, scarlet kerchiefed and dun skirted. Off in the grey distance was the figure of a peasant woman carrying her child upon her back, her tall, straight form magnified into strange attitude by the misty atmosphere. A brush capable of strong handling, and an eye trained to seize the more fleeting beauties of nature, would have found in this La Bouille picture a poem of colour and tenderness.

I have already mentioned the naturalness of the rustic life of the Seine fields and farm-houses. The sturdy simplicity of the Normandy peasant is his well-known characteristic. The farmers at the plough, the fishermen mending their nets, the shepherd tending his flocks, are not the least poetic of the elements which make the charm of this river scenery. There reigns here an Arcadian calm, a certain patriarchal simplicity. The complicated ingenuities and labour-saving machines of modern invention have not as yet become the fashion among the Normandy peasant-farmers, and thus every agricultural implement, seen out-of-doors, seems available for an artist’s purpose. The ploughs are marvels of ancient construction; oxen and horses are harnessed in ways known only to those who have learned the science as a secret handed down from sire to son; and carts, threshing-machines, rakes, and hoes have an air of venerability that matches well with the old gabled houses and worn rustic dress of the farmers. It is this aspect of age which imparts such beautiful low tones of colour to the pictures of human life along these shores. There are no flaring, flashing hues, no brilliant dashes of colour; instead, the tones of landscape, sky, atmosphere, and the human life blend in a beautiful harmony of soft low tints. In matters of toilet, the Normandy peasant’s taste is perfect. The farmers wear blouses of dark, sober blues; the women short skirts of dull green, brown or home-spun grey; their aprons are snuff-colour or lilac, and their close-fitting embroidered cap, or the coloured kerchief tied over their heads, brings into admirable relief their brilliant complexions, strong prominent features, and flaxen tresses.

In that morning’s journey from Rouen to Havre we enjoyed a delightful variety of out-door life. In the early sunrise hours there were visible the first symptoms of the farm-house in early rising. The farmer was seen striding over the dew-wet meadows to open barns or to drive forth the cattle; women were busy milking, and the children trudging to the river with pails and pitchers to be filled. Later, the fields were alive with the ploughmen’s cries, and men and women were starting out, rakes and scythes in hand, for their day’s work; children stood up to their chins in the yellow grain, in the midst of the scarlet _coquelicots_ and the star-eyed daisies. Towards noon there was a pretty picture of a farmer wheeling along the river bank a huge load of green grass, atop of which were seated two round, moon-faced children whose laps and hands were full of the brilliant field-flowers. Behind them walked the mother with a rake slung over her shoulder, her short skirts and scant draperies permitting a noble freedom of step and movement, her head poised as only the head of a woman used to the balancing of heavy burdens is ever held. Hers was altogether a striking figure, and the brush of Vollen or of Breton would have seized upon her to embody the type of one of his rustic beauties, whose mingled fierceness and grace make their peasants the rude goddesses of the plough.

One of the chief charms of the Seine scenery is the variety and contrast its shores present. One passes directly from the calm and the rural naturalness of sloping meadows fringed with osiers, willows, and poplars, to the walled quays of Caudebec, with its spires, broad avenues, and garden-enclosed houses. Caudebec is characterized by an imposing _château_ crowning its hillside, by beautiful gardens, terraces, its long row of “striped” houses stretching along its quays, and the beauty of its cathedral spire rising above the tree-trops.

Perhaps Villequier may be said to be the culminating point of beauty upon the Seine. Here the river seems only like a large lake, a fact which invests the landscape with its noble uprising hills and the beautiful, thickly wooded spurs of the hillocks, with something of the rounded finished aspect which belongs to lake scenery. The lovely village of Villequier itself peeps in and out of its encompassing trees as if with a conscious air of coquetry. The bright, gaily coloured houses grouped upon the water’s edge give a touch of Italian brilliancy to the scene, while its fine _château_ of Villequier and the old Gothic spire of the village church add the noble lines to the _ensemble_.

This bay of Villequier is the beginning of the bolder beauty of the Seine scenery. Its quieter aspects lie above Villequier. The artist in search of striking scenes and a rich variety of contrasts will find this part of the river afford fine material. On the way to Quillebœuf and Tancarville the shores of the river assume a hundred different aspects. There is the forest of Bretonne, the lovely valley of the Bolbec, the beautiful _château_ of Etalan, and the ruins of the Twelfth Century church. Quillebœuf itself stands boldly out into the river, perched upon a spur of rising ground, and is, perhaps, the most pretentious town upon the Seine. After Quillebœuf and Tancarville the loftier hills and thickly wooded shores of the river give place to wide, flat marshes and open valleys. The marshes just beyond Quillebœuf are, to our taste, its most distinguishing beauty; they run directly out to the most distant points of the horizon, and the rich yellow-green grass, with its brilliant bouquets of wild flowers scattered profusely over the flat treeless surface, makes a kaleidoscope of colour under the broad unbroken splendour of the noon-day sun. Cattle in large herds, horses, and sheep, pasture upon the rich meadows, so that the animal-painter finds here a superb landscape for the setting of his ruminating cows, fleecy sheep, or wild unbridled colts.

Just beyond these meadows the Seine loses all the character of a river. It has assumed, before its final plunge into the ocean, the turbulent, tumultuous aspect of a small sea, and like a lover wearing his lady’s colours, the river turns to the deeper greys and colder blues of the sea’s dark tint. The boat stops long enough at the wonderful old seaport town of Honfleur for one to catch a glimpse of its quaint turreted houses, its crooked narrow streets, its wharves with their picturesque assemblage of lateen-shaped sails. Then Havre is reached, and with those swarming quays and bright pebbly shores the Seine is lost in the great Atlantic.

THE GANGES

SIR WILLIAM W. HUNTER

Of all great rivers on the surface of the globe, none can compare in sanctity with the Ganges, or Mother Gangá, as she is affectionately called by devout Hindus. From her source in the Himálayas, to her mouth in the Bay of Bengal, her banks are holy ground. Each point of junction of a tributary with the main stream has its own special claims to sanctity. But the tongue of land at Allahábád, where the Ganges unites with her great sister river the Jumna, is the true _Prayág_, the place of pilgrimage whither hundreds of thousands of devout Hindus repair to wash away their sins in her sanctifying waters. Many of the other holy rivers of India borrow their sanctity from a supposed underground connection with the Ganges. This fond fable recalls the primitive time when the Aryan race was moving southward with fresh and tender recollections of the Gangetic plains. It is told not only of first-class rivers of Central and Southern India, like the Narbadá, but also of many minor streams of local sanctity.

An ancient legend relates how Gangá, the fair daughter of King Himálaya (Himávat) and of his queen, the air-nymph Menaka, was persuaded, after long supplication, to shed her purifying influence upon the sinful earth. The icicle-studded cavern from which she issues is the tangled hair of the god Siva. Loving legends hallow each part of her course; and from the names of her tributaries and of the towns along her banks, a whole mythology might be built up. The southern offshoots of the Aryan race not only sanctified their southern rivers by a fabled connection with the holy stream of the north. They also hoped that in the distant future, their rivers would attain an equal sanctity by the diversion of the Ganges waters through underground channels. Thus, the Bráhmans along the Narbadá maintain that in this iron age of the world (indeed, in the year 1894 A. D.) the sacred character of the Ganges will depart from her now polluted stream, and take refuge by an underground passage in their own Narbadá river.

The estuary of the Ganges is not less sacred than her source. Ságar Island at her mouth is annually visited by a vast concourse of pilgrims, in commemoration of her act of saving grace; when, in order to cleanse the 60,000 damned ones of the house of Ságar, she divided herself into a hundred channels, thus making sure of reaching their remains with her purifying waters, and so forming the delta of Bengal. The six years’ pilgrimage from her source to her mouth and back again, known as _pradak-shina_, is still performed by many; and a few devotees may yet be seen wearily accomplishing the meritorious penance of “measuring their length” along certain parts of the route. To bathe in the Ganges at the stated festivals washes away guilt, and those who have thus purified themselves carry back bottles of her water to their kindred in far-off provinces. To die and be cremated on the river bank, and to have their ashes borne seaward by her stream, is the last wish of millions of Hindus. Even to ejaculate “Gangá, Gangá, at the distance of one hundred leagues from the river,” said her more enthusiastic devotees, might atone for the sins committed during three previous lives.

The Ganges has earned the reverence of the people by centuries of unfailing work done for them. She and her tributaries are the unwearied water-carriers for the densely-peopled provinces of Northern India, and the peasantry reverence the bountiful stream which fertilizes their fields and distributes their produce. None of the other rivers of India comes near to the Ganges in works of beneficence. The Brahmaputra and the Indus have longer streams, as measured by the geographer, but their upper courses lie beyond the great mountain wall in the unknown recesses of the Himálayas.

Not one of the rivers of Southern India is navigable in the proper sense. But in the north, the Ganges begins to distribute fertility by irrigation as soon as she reaches the plains, within 200 miles of her source, and at the same time her channel becomes in some sort navigable. Thenceforward she rolls majestically down to the sea in a beautiful stream, which never becomes a merely destructive torrent in the rains, and never dwindles away in the hottest summer. Tapped by canals, she distributes millions of cubic feet of water every hour in irrigation; but her diminished volume is promptly recruited by great tributaries, and the wide area of her catchment basin renders her stream inexhaustible in the service of man. Embankments are in but few places required to restrain her inundations, for the alluvial silt which she spills over her banks affords in most parts a top-dressing of inexhaustible fertility. If one crop be drowned by flood, the peasant comforts himself with the thought that the next crop from his silt-manured fields will abundantly requite him.

The Ganges has also played a preëminent part in the commercial development of Northern India. Until the opening of the railway system, from 1855 to 1870, her magnificent stream formed almost the sole channel of traffic between upper India and the seaboard. The products not only of the river plains, but even the cotton of the Central Provinces, were formerly brought by this route to Calcutta. Notwithstanding the revolution caused by the railways, the heavier and more bulky staples are still conveyed by the river, and the Ganges may yet rank as one of the greatest waterways in the world.

The value of the upward and downward trade of the interior with Calcutta, by the Gangetic channels, may be taken at about 400,000,000 of rupees per annum, of which over 153,000,000 go by country-boats, and nearly 240,000,000 by steamers (1891). This is exclusive of the sea-borne commerce. But the adjustments which have to be made are so numerous that the calculation is an intricate one. As far back as 1876, the number of cargo boats registered at Bámangháta, on one of the canals east of Calcutta, was 178,627; at Hugli, a river-side station on a single one of the many Gangetic mouths, 124,357; and at Patna, 550 miles from the mouth of the river, the number of cargo boats entered in the register was 61,571. The port of Calcutta is itself one of the world’s greatest emporia for sea and river-borne commerce. Its total exports and imports landward and seaward amounted in 1881 to about 1,400,000,000 of rupees (Rx. 140,000,000) and to 1,523,000,000 of rupees (Rx. 152,363,583) in 1891.

Articles of European commerce, such as wheat, indigo, cotton, opium, and saltpetre, prefer the railway; so also do the imports of Manchester piece goods. But if we take into account the vast development in the export trade of oil-seeds, rice, etc., still carried by the river, and the growing interchange of food-grains between interior districts of the country, it seems probable that the actual amount of traffic on the Ganges has increased rather than diminished since the opening of the railways. At well-chosen points along her course, the iron lines touch the banks, and these river-side stations form centres for collecting and distributing the produce of the surrounding country. The Ganges, therefore, is not merely a rival, but a feeder of the railway. Her ancient cities, such as Allahábád, Benares, and Patna, have thus been able to preserve their former importance; while fishing villages like Sahibganj and Goalanda have been raised into thriving river marts.

For, unlike the Indus and the Brahmaputra, the Ganges is a river of great historic cities. Calcutta, Patna, and Benares are built on her banks; Agra and Delhi on those of her tributary, the Jumna; and Allahábád on the tongue of land where the two sister streams unite. Many millions of human beings live by commerce along her margin. Calcutta, with its suburbs on both sides of the river, contains a population of nearly a million. It has a municipal revenue of four and one-fourth millions of rupees; a sea-borne and coasting commerce in 1891 of 770,000,000 of rupees, with a landward trade of over 750,000,000. These figures vary from year to year, but show a steady increase. Calcutta lies on the Hugli, the most westerly of the mouths by which the Ganges enters the sea. To the eastward stretches the delta, till it is hemmed in on the other side by the Meghná, the most easterly of the mouths of the Ganges. More accurately speaking, the Meghná is the vast estuary by which the combined waters of the Brahmaputra and Gangetic river-systems find their way into the Bay of Bengal.

MORNING ON THE GANGES

PIERRE LOTI

Nearly all the streets lead to the Ganges, where they grow wider and become less gloomy. Here, suddenly, the magnificent palaces and all the brightness of the day dawn upon us.

These massive tiers of steps, which stretch along the banks and reach to the water’s edge even in these times of drought, where fallen temples emerge from their slimy bed, were made in honour of the Ganges, and on each landing there are little granite altars, shaped like niches, in which diminutive gods are placed. These images are like those of the temples, but they are of more massive construction, so as to withstand the swirl of the waters which cover them during the annual rains.

The sun has just risen from the plain through which old Ganges wanders, a plain of mud and vegetation still overshadowed by the mists of night; and waiting there for the first red rays of dawn lie the granite temples of Benares, the rosy pyramids, the golden shafts, and all the sacred city, extended in terraces, as if to catch the first light and deck itself in the glory of the morning.

This is the hour which, since the Brahmin faith began, has been sacred to prayer and to religious ecstasy, and it is now that Benares pours forth all its people, all its flowers, all its garlands, all its birds, and all its living things on to the banks of the Ganges. Awakened by the kiss of the sun, all that have received souls from Brahma rush joyously down the granite steps. The men, whose faces beam with calm serenity, are garbed in Kashmir shawls, some pink, some yellow, and some in the colours of the dawn. The women, veiled with muslins in the antique style, form white groups along the road, and the reflection from their copper ewers and drinking vessels shimmer amongst the silvery glints of their many bracelets, necklets, and the rings which they wear round their ankles. Nobly beautiful both of face and gait, they walk like goddesses, while the metal rings on their arms and feet murmur musically.

And to the river, already encumbered with garlands, each one comes to offer a new wreath. Some have twisted ropes of jasmine flowers which look like white necklets, others garlands of Indian pinks whose flowers of golden yellow and pale sulphur gleam in contrast, resembling the changing colours of an Indian veil.

And the birds that had been sleeping all along friezes of the houses and the palaces awake too and fill the air with chirpings and with song in the mad joy of dawn.

In all the temples the gods have their morning serenades, and the angry roar of the tom-toms, the wail of the bag-pipes, and the howling of the sacred trumpets, are heard from every side.

Naked children holding each other by the hand come in gay throngs; yoghis and slowly-moving fakirs descend the steps; the sacred cattle advance with deliberate steps, while people stand respectfully aside offering them fresh wreaths of reeds and flowers. They, too, seem to look on the splendours of the sun, and in their harmless fashion appear to understand and pray.

Next come the sheep and goats; then dogs and monkeys hurry down the steps.

All the granite temples scattered on the steps that serve as niches and altars, some for Vishnu, some for the many-armed Ganesa, protrude into the sunlight their squat little gods--gods which are grey with mud, for they have slept many months under the troubled waters of the river to which the ashes of the dead are consigned.

Now that the rays of the sun are fierce the people shelter under large umbrellas whose shade awaits them. For these huge parasols, which resemble gigantic mushrooms clustering under the walls of the city, are always left open.

The many rafts and the lower steps are thronged with Brahmins, who, after setting down their flowers and ewers, hasten to disrobe. Pink and white muslins and cashmeres of all colours lie mingled on the ground, or are hung over bamboo canes, and now the matchless nude forms appear, some of pale bronze, others of a deeper shade.

The men, slim and of athletic build, plunge to their waists into the sacred waters. The women, still wearing a veil of muslin round their shoulders and waists, merely plunge their many-ringed arms and ankles into the Ganges; then they kneel at the extremest edge and let fall their long unknotted coils of hair into the water. Then, raising their heads once more, they allow the water dripping from their drenched hair to fall upon their necks and bosoms. And now with their tightly-clinging draperies they look like some statue of a “winged Victory,” more beautiful and more voluptuous than if they had been nude.

From all sides the bowing people shower their garlands and their flowers into the Ganges; all fill their ewers and jars and then, stooping, fill their hollowed hand and drink. Here religious feeling reigns supreme, and no sensual thought ever seems to assail these beauteous mingled forms. They come into unconscious contact with each other, but only heed the river, the sun, and the splendour of the morning in a dream of ecstasy. And when the long ritual is ended, the women retire to their homes, while the men, seated on the rafts amid their garlands dispose themselves for prayer.

Oh! the joyful awakenings of this primeval race, praying in daily unison to God, where the poorest may find room amongst the splendours of the sun, the waters, and the flowers.

All the life of Benares centres round the river. People come from the palaces and jungles to die on its sacred banks, and the old and the sick are brought here by their families to await their end. The relatives never return to their homes in the country after the death has taken place, and so Benares, which already contains three hundred thousand inhabitants, increases rapidly in size. For those who feel their end approaching this is the spot so eagerly desired.

Oh! to die at Benares. To die on the banks of the Ganges! To have one’s body bathed for the last time, and then to have one’s ashes strewn into the river!

THE COLORADO

HENRY GANNETT

The country drained by the Colorado River is a peculiar region. It is a country of plateaus and canons, the plateaus mainly arid and sterile, where the few streams flow in deep gorges far below the surface.

The longest and most northern branch of the Colorado is Green River, which heads in the Wind River Mountains, against the sources of the Bighorn and Snake Rivers. This stream, in its long course towards the south, receives the waters of the Uinta from the west, and the Yampa and White Rivers from the east. Near latitude 38° 15′ and longitude 110° it is joined by Grand River, a stream of nearly equal size, which heads in Middle Park, Colorado, drawing its first supplies of water from the snowfields of Long Peak. The stream below the junction of these two forks is known as the Colorado.

Below their junction, the principal branches of the Colorado from the east are the San Juan, the Colorado Chiquito, Williams Fork, and the Gila; on the west, the “Dirty Devil,” Paria, and Virgin.

This region is limited on the east, north, and north-west by high mountain ranges. Its surface is nearly flat, but by no means unbroken. There is little rolling or undulating country. Changes of level take place by very gentle, uniform slopes, or by abrupt, precipitous steps. A large part of the surface consists of bare rocks, with no soil or vegetation. A part is covered with a thin sandy soil, which supports a growth of sage and cacti, or even a few pinon pines and cedars. The only vegetation is that characteristic of an arid country.

This aridity has modified orographic forms to an astonishing degree. Where, under different climatic conditions, there would be produced a region similar in most respects to the prairies of the Mississippi valley, we find a country, flat indeed, or inclined at low angles, but one whose water-courses are far beneath the general level, deep down in cañons, hundreds, thousands of feet beneath the surface.

Great cliffs, thousands of feet in height, and extending like huge walls for hundreds of miles, change the level of the country at a single step.

Isolated buttes and mesas, of great height, are scattered over the plateaus, indicating the former height of the plain of which they formed parts.

“The landscape everywhere, away from the river, is of rock--cliffs of rock, tables of rock, terraces of rock, crags of rock--ten thousand strangely carved forms. Rocks everywhere, and no vegetation: no soil, no land. When speaking of these rocks, we must not conceive of piles of boulders, or heaps of fragments, but a whole land of naked rock, with giant forms carved on it; cathedral-shaped buttes, towering hundreds or thousands of feet; cliffs that cannot be scaled, and cañon walls that shrink the river into insignificance, with vast hollow domes and tall pinnacles, and shafts set on verge overhead, and all highly coloured--buff, grey, red, brown, and chocolate; never lichened, never moss-covered, but bare and often polished.”

The above description by Major J. W. Powell, who has explored the cañons of the Colorado, gives a graphic pen-picture of the lower and more arid plateaus of this region.