Chapter L: C. Bryan (1)

This river, or sound, spans a region of a hundred and forty miles from north to south, is salt, and yet almost without tide, neither rising nor falling more than a few inches by the winds; lies upon the very shore of the Atlantic, and from one to seven miles wide--a most placid, safe and beautiful inland sea in the very teeth of a wild tempestuous ocean.

Unlike the St. John’s or any other possible river, having no considerable rise or fall, its bordering lands are not overflowed, and unlike other seacoast waterways, it is not cumbered with interminable salt marshes. Its waters beat upon a bold, often abrupt shore, diversified into high and low lands of every grade and covered with the luxuriant vegetation common to warm climates.

Wonderfully beautiful is Indian River. There is no other such sheet of water in the world. Nature, with lavish hand, spread its waters and adorned its shores. The design of the Great Master Artist is seen in the narrow strip of land as a levee separating the river from the Atlantic, and in the forest on the levee as a great wind-break to curb the fierce winds of the ocean. Properly speaking, it is not a river, but a sound, or arm of the sea. Its centre is on an air line north and south 140 miles long, while its banks curve in and out in beautiful bays and grottoes. A few small creeks empty into it from the west, while the water empties into it from the Atlantic through Indian River Inlet and Jupiter Inlet.

It is a sea without its dangers, a river without a current, seldom calm, but always in motion from the winds. From this constant motion its water is kept pure. The winds of winter, coming from the north-west, are softened and warmed by the waters of the upper St. John’s River, and the pine forests on the west of the hammocks of this river, and the winds of summer coming from the east, are tempered and cooled by the Gulf Stream, making the climate most delightful in winter and summer, and, perhaps, most to be desired of any in America.

Of the Indian River we find the following from the able pen of ex-Governor Gleason:

“Indian River, as it is called, is a sound, and lies parallel to the Atlantic, separated from it by a narrow strip of land varying from a few rods to three miles in width; it is a sheet of pure tide water, salt, clear and transparent. It has two inlets from the ocean--Indian River Inlet, about 100 miles from its north head, and Jupiter Inlet at its extreme southern end. From its north head to within twenty-five miles of Jupiter Inlet, it is from one to six miles wide; from Jupiter Inlet to the mouth of the St. Lucie River, a distance of about twenty-five miles, it is from one-fourth of a mile to a mile in width, and is known as Jupiter Narrows. It is affected very little by the tide and the current moves by the wind. Being in the region of the trade winds, with almost a constant breeze from the east during the daytime, it affords peculiar facilities for sailing up and down the river, and the people take advantage of it. Every house is either on the river bank or a short distance up some navigable stream flowing into it, and has a boat landing. It is the Venice of America, and one can seldom look out upon the water without seeing boats sailing both ways. The river is well supplied with the finest oysters, sea-turtles, and a great variety of fish, among which are mullet, cavalli, snapper, blue fish, sheepshead and sea-trout. The manatee is caught at the mouth of the St. Lucie and Jupiter Inlet. Some of them weigh from 1,500 to 2,000 pounds and are very grand eating. They are found nowhere else in the United States, their principal habitat being near the mouths of the streams flowing into the Caribbean Sea, where they feed upon a peculiar grass called manatee, which grows at the bottom of most tide-water streams in the tropics.”

Merritt’s Island, which is about forty miles long and contains about thirty thousand acres is situated in the northern part of the river. The water on its east side is from one-fourth of a mile to six miles wide, and is known as Banana River. The shores of Indian River, both on the west side of Merritt’s Island and on the main land, are free from swamps and marshes, and rise at an angle of from twenty to twenty-five degrees to an elevation of from twenty-five to fifty feet. In many places the banks are high bluffs. The country on Merritt’s Island, and the west shore has the appearance of an endless park, the timber being principally scattered pines, with an undergrowth of palmettos and grass, interspersed with an occasional forest of palm, live oak and other hard wood timbers.

The orange belt is from one to three miles in width, and is principally on the west side near the river. West of the orange belt are the St. John’s prairies, which are unfit for orange culture, but afford fine pasturage, and are good for vegetables and the culture of sugar-cane and hay.

The river south of Indian River Inlet, on the eastern shore, is skirted with a narrow belt of mangrove timber of only a few rods in width, which is very dense and almost impenetrable. It is a deep green the entire year, and presents a beautiful appearance. The strip of land adjacent to the ocean between Jupiter Inlet and the mouth of St. Lucie River, is known as Jupiter Island, and is about half a mile wide and twenty miles long. It has some excellent land and is elevated from fifteen to thirty feet above the sea. The river here, at Jupiter Narrows, is less than half a mile wide. The western bank is from forty to fifty feet high and covered with a dense low scrub of live oak bushes, not more than two or three feet high, and when viewed from the Island, these heights remind one of the green pastures of the north--they are always the same colour, a beautiful green. This portion of the river is full of oysters and the inlet is the finest fishing on the coast. On the bank of the river, at various places, are large mounds of clam and oyster shells; the largest of them near Jupiter Inlet, is nearly a quarter of a mile long and about forty feet high.

At the north end of the river are some fine live oak and palm hummock lands, very rich and suitable for orange groves, sugar-cane and garden vegetables. The climate from October to May is a perpetual Indian summer, commingled with the balmiest days of spring, seldom interrupted by storms and only with occasional showers, while most of the time there is a gentle breeze coming inland from the even-tempered waters of the Gulf Stream. The prevailing winds are easterly, being the trade winds, which extend as far north as Cape Canaveral and are perceptible as far north as New Smyrna and St. Augustine. The nights are cool even in summer--the atmosphere invigourating and health restoring.

Mineral and other springs are frequent, many of them possessing medicinal properties. Game is abundant--bear, deer, quail and wild turkeys on the land, ducks on the lakes and rivers, and green turtle and fish in the waters. All of these, with its beautiful building sites, its superior surf bathing and boat sailing, the absence of swamps and marshes, will eventually cause the banks of this magnificent sheet of water to become one vast villa of winter residences.

THE NILE

J. HOWARD REED

The holy river--“the Jove-descended Nile”--formerly bore the name of Ægyptus. Professor Rawlinson in his _History of the Ancient Egyptians_, says: “The term Egypt was not known to the ancient Egyptians themselves, but appears to have been first used by the Greeks as a name for the Nile, and thence extended to the country. It is stated by some authorities that the river received its present title from Nilus, an ancient king of Thebes, who named the stream after himself.”

“Father Nile” was an object of great veneration to the ancients, and a gift of its waters was considered by them as a present fit for kings and queens. The veneration in which the river was held, of course, arose from the blessings of its annual overflow spread broadcast over its banks by fertilizing the seed of the sower, producing abundant crops for the sickle of the reaper, and thus making glad the heart of man. It is stated that the Arabs in the present day consider it a delicious privilege to slake their thirst with the salubrious and agreeable waters of the river, and I have read that they will even artificially excite thirst to indulge in the pleasure of imbibing refreshing and satisfying draughts from the “holy stream.” The general Pescennius Niger is said to have cried to his soldiers: “What! crave you for wine, when you have the water of the Nile to drink?” Homer is stated to have said, no doubt referring poetically to its regular and fertilizing overflow: “The Nile flows down from heaven.” The Egyptians say that “If Mahomet had tasted the waters of the Nile, he would have prayed God to make him immortal, that he might have enjoyed them for ever.”

The river has a total length of considerably over 3,000 miles, and is remarkable among the rivers of the world from the fact that for about the last 1,500 miles of its flow it receives no tributary--none, in fact, after the Albara or Tacazze. The consequence is that, by the time it reaches the sea, its volume is considerably reduced by evaporation, and from the large quantity of water used along its banks for irrigation and other purposes. The river is formed of two principal branches, the Bahr-el-Azrek, or Blue Nile, and the Bahr-el-Abiad, or White Nile, the latter of which is the main branch or true Nile. It receives also, as tributary rivers, the Atbara or Tacazze before mentioned, with the Sobat and Asua on the east side; and the Bahr-el-Gazelle on the west; besides other smaller and less important streams. Its waters are discharged into the Mediterranean through several mouths, the two principal of which are known as the Rosetta and Damietta mouths--the first-named being to the west and the other to the east. The principal island formed by the divisions of the river being shaped like the fourth letter of the Greek alphabet, takes the name of Delta; and the Nile is doubtless the river which first suggested what is now a technical name for all similar formations at the mouths of rivers.

The rise and overflow of the Nile caused by the seasonal rains of the interior, has been for ages noted for its regularity. The rise commences about midsummer, reaches its greatest height at the autumnal equinox, and has again subsided by Christmas; leaving the land highly enriched by the fertilizing sediment of red earth brought down by the Abyssinian tributaries and deposited by the river. The land can then be worked and the crops planted. The rise and fall of the river is watched with great anxiety by the inhabitants of the Nile valley. At intervals along its banks river gauges, or nilometers, are fixed, upon which the variations of the river are duly recorded.

Nearly five centuries before the Christian era, the first great African traveller, Herodotus, writing about the Nile, said: “Respecting the nature of this river, I was unable to gain any information, either from the priests or any one else. I was very desirous, however, of learning from them why the Nile, beginning at the summer solstice, fills and overflows for a hundred days; and when it has nearly completed this number of days, falls short in its stream and retires; so that it continues low all the winter, until the return of the summer solstice.”

Seneca writes that the Emperor Nero sent an exploring expedition under two centurions with military force to explore the countries along the banks of the Astapus or White River, and to search for the Nile’s sources. They passed down the river a considerable distance until immense marshes were met with. They forced their way through, and continued their journey southward, until the river was seen “tumbling down or issuing out between the rocks.” They were then obliged to turn back and declare their mission a failure. The centurions are stated to have brought back with them a map of the districts they had passed through, for the information of the Imperial Nero.

This early expedition succeeded in penetrating about 800 Roman miles south of Meroe--that is to say, reaching three or four degrees north latitude. The place where water was seen “tumbling down from between the rocks” was probably the Fola or Mekade cataract, again discovered in our own day by the late General Gordon. The river here rushes through a narrow ravine, over and between rocks of from thirty to forty feet high. These falls are stated to be the only insurmountable obstacle to the navigation of the Nile, for vessels of considerable size, from the Mediterranean to the Albert Lake.

About seventy years later, during the Second Century, we find Claudius Ptolemy, a celebrated geographer and astrologer of Alexandria, writing about the Nile and its sources. He tells us that the “holy stream” rises some twelve degrees south of the equator, in a number of streams that flow into two lakes, situated east and west of each other; from which, in turn, issue two rivers; these afterwards unite and form the Nile. Ptolemy also mentions that in the interior of Africa were some mountains which he called “_Selenes Oros_”--generally translated “Mountains of the Moon.”

Following in the steps of Ptolemy, come the Arab geographers, and they are stated to have practically adopted all his theories and geographical notions.

Later on we find that the Portuguese travellers obtained a considerable amount of information regarding the geography of the interior of Africa. They appear to have had some knowledge of the existence of several large lakes in the centre of the continent, and in some of their early maps these lakes find a place.

It appears to have been known to the ancients that the Nile proper is formed of two principal branches, which join and form one river close to where the town of Khartoum (or its ruin) now stands; but beyond this, as we have seen, little authentic information has been handed down.

In the year 1770, Bruce gave his attention to the Blue Nile. He was enabled to locate the sources of that branch of the river among the mountains and highlands of Abyssinia, near Lake Dembea. In 1788, the African Association was founded, and in furtherance of its objects much information was obtained of the geography of the “Dark Continent.” In 1827, M. Linant, a French traveller, passed up the White Nile to a considerable distance above its junction with the Blue Nile branch. About the year 1840 two Egyptian naval officers headed an expedition, fitted out by Mahommed Ali, the then ruler of Egypt; they forced their way through the terrible marshes to within 3° 4″ of the equator; but were, like the expedition of the Emperor Nero, at last obliged to turn back.

In 1831, the old African Association was merged into the Royal Geographical Society, and from then, right down to the present time, our knowledge of the Nile and its sources has been perfecting itself.

While resting on the plateau land above the south-west corner of the Albert Lake, on the 25th of May, 1888, Stanley’s attention was called to a towering mountain height capped with snow, which, from where he stood, lay about fifty miles away to the south-east. Twelve months later on his homeward journey, after crossing the Semliki River, which he found flowing into the south end of the Albert Lake, Stanley found himself following a range of hills, the tops of which towering up some 19,000 feet high, were covered with perpetual snow. This melting under the action of a tropical sun, poured its volumes of water into the Semliki River at his feet, which in turn conveyed it thence to the Albert Lake and onwards to swell the torrent of Father Nile.

Stanley writes: “Little did we imagine it, but the results of our journey from the Albert Nyanza to ---- where I turned away from the newly-discovered lake in 1876, established beyond a doubt that the snowy mountain, which bears the native name of Ruwenzori or Ruwenjura, is identical with what the ancients called ‘Mountains of the Moon.’

“Note what Scheadeddin, an Arabian geographer of the Fifteenth Century writes: ‘From the Mountains of the Moon the Egyptian Nile takes its rise. It cuts horizontally the equator in its course north. Many rivers come from this mountain and unite in a great lake. From this lake comes the Nile, the most beautiful and greatest of the rivers of all the earth.’”

THE NILE

ISAAC TAYLOR

After a few days at Cairo--one of the most amusing and picturesque cities in the world--the Express Nile Service of Messrs. Cook brings the traveller in three days to Luxor, where he will find enough to occupy him for as many weeks. The first view from the river shows the appositeness of the epithet Hecatompylos, applied to Thebes by Homer. Huge cubical masses of masonry--not the gateways of the city, which was never walled, but the pylons and propylons of the numerous temples--are seen towering above the palms, and, separated from each other by miles of verdant plain, roughly indicate the limits of the ancient city.

At Luxor the Nile valley is about ten miles across. The escarpment of the desert plateau, which elsewhere forms a fringing cliff of nearly uniform elevation, here breaks into cone-shaped peaks rising to a height of seventeen hundred feet above the level plain, which in January is already waving with luxuriant crops--the barley coming into ear, the lentils and vetches in flower and the tall sugar-canes beginning to turn yellow. The plain is dotted with Arab villages, each raised above the level of the inundation on its _tell_, or mound of ancient _débris_, and embosomed in a grove of date-palms mingled with the quaint dom-palms characteristic of the Thebiad. Animal life is far more abundant than in Italy or France. We note the camels and buffaloes feeding everywhere, tethered in the fields; the great soaring kites floating in the air; the graceful hoopoos, which take the place of our English thrushes; the white paddy-birds fishing on the sand-banks of the river; gay king-fishers, among them the fish-tiger pied in black and white; the sun-bird, a bee-eater clad in a brilliant coat of green and gold; the crested lark, the greater and lesser owl, as well as water-wagtails, pipits, chats and warblers, numerous swifts and swallows, with an occasional vulture, eagle, cormorant, pelican, or crane. The jackal is common; and the wolf, the hyena, and the fox are not unfrequently heard, but seldom seen.

The sunsets on the Nile, if not the finest in the world, are unique in character. This is probably due to the excessive dryness of the atmosphere, and to the haze of impalpable dust arising from the fine mud deposited by the inundation. As the sun descends, he leaves a pathway or glowing gold reflected from the smooth surface of the Nile. Any faint streaks of cloud in the west shine out as the tenderest and most translucent bars of rose; a lurid reflection of the sunset lights up the eastern sky; then half an hour after sunset a great dome of glow arises in the west, lemon, changing into the deepest orange, and slowly dying away into a crimson fringe on the horizon--the glassy mirror of the Nile gleaming like molten metal; and then, as the last hues of sunset fade, the zodiacal light, a huge milky cone, shoots up into the sky.

On moonless nights the stars shine out with a brilliancy unknown in our misty northern latitudes. About three in the morning the strange marvel of the Southern Cross rises for an hour or two, the lowest star of the four appearing through a fortunate depression in the chain of hills. When the moon is nearly full, the visitors sally out into the temples to enjoy in the clear, calm and balmy air the mystery of their dark recesses, enhanced by the brilliant illumination of the thickly clustered columns. It is a sight, once seen, never to be forgotten.

But the charm of Luxor does not consist mainly in its natural beauties, though these are not to be despised, but in its unrivalled historical interest. There is no other site of a great ancient city which takes you so far and so clearly back into the past. All the greater monuments of Thebes, all the chief tombs and temples, are older than the time of Moses; they bear in clearly readable cartouches on their sculptured walls the names of the great conquering kings of the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties--Thotmes III., Amenhotep III., Seti I., and Rameses II.--who carried the victorious arms of Egypt to Ethiopia, Lybia, the Euphrates and the Orontes; the great wall-faces forming a picture-gallery of their exploits. More modern names on the temple-walls of Thebes are those of Shishak, who vanquished Rehoboam, and Tirhakah, the contemporary of Hezekiah. The earliest name yet found at Thebes is that of Usertasen, a king of the twelfth dynasty, who lived some forty-three centuries ago; the latest considerable additions were made by the Ptolemies, and the record finally closes with a cartouche in which we spell out the hieroglyphic name of the Emperor Tiberius. But practically the monumental history of Thebes has ended before that of ancient Rome begins. The arches of Titus and Constantine, the mausoleum of Hadrian, Trajan’s Column, the Colosseum and the Catacombs--in short, all the great structures of pre-Christian Rome--date from a time when Thebes had begun to be forsaken, and the ruin of her temples had commenced. Even the oldest Roman monuments, the Cloaca Maxima, the Agger, and the substructures of the Palatine belong to a period when the greater edifices of Thebes were hoary with the dust of centuries. When Herodotus, the father of European history, voyaged up the Nile to Thebes, at a time when the Greeks had not even heard of an obscure Italian town which bore the name of Rome, the great temples which he saw, the vocal Memnon which is the statue of Amenhotep III., and the buildings which he ascribed to a king he called Sesostris, already belonged to an antiquity as venerable as that which separates the Heptarchy and the Anglo-Saxon Kings from the reign of Queen Victoria.

Difficult as it is to realize the antiquity of these monuments, in many of which the chiselling is as sharp and the colouring as brilliant as if they had been executed only yesterday, it is still more difficult by any description to convey an impression of their vastness. The temples and tombs are scattered over a space of many square miles; single ruins cover an area of several acres; thousands of square yards of wall contain only the pictured story of a single campaign. For splendour and magnitude the group of temples at Karnak, about two miles from Luxor, forms the most magnificent ruin in the world.

THE DON

ÉLISÉE RÉCLUS

The lands draining to the Sea of Azov, form no sharply defined region, with bold natural frontiers and distinct populations. The sources of the Don and its head-streams intermingle with those of the Volga and Dnieper--some--like the Medveditza, flowing even for some distance parallel with the Volga. As in the Dnieper and Dniester valleys, the “black lands” and bare steppes here also follow each other successively as we proceed southwards, while the population naturally diminishes in density in the same direction. The land is occupied in the north and east by the Great Russians, westwards by the Little Russians, in the south and in New Russia by colonies of every race and tongue, rendering this region a sort of common territory, where all the peoples of the empire except the Finns are represented. Owing to the great extent of the steppes, the population is somewhat less dense than in the Dnieper basin and Central Russia, but it is yearly and rapidly increasing.

The Don, the root of which is probably contained in its Greek name Tanaïs, is one of the great European rivers, if not in the volume of its waters, at least in the length of its course, with its windings some 1,335 miles altogether. Rising in a lakelet in the government of Tula, it flows first southwards to its junction with the nearly parallel Veronej, beyond which point it trends to the south-east, and even eastwards, as if extending to reach the Volga. After being enlarged by the Khopor and Medveditza, it arrives within forty-five miles of that river, above which it has a mean elevation of 138 feet. Its banks, like those of the Volga, present the normal appearance, the right being raised and steep, while the left has already been levelled by the action of the water. Thus the Don flows, as it were, on a sort of terrace resembling a stair step, the right or western cliffs seemingly diverting it to the lower Volga bed. Nevertheless, before reaching that river, it makes a sharp bend first southwards, then south-westwards to the Sea of Azov.

From a commercial stand-point, it really continues the course of the Volga. Flowing to a sea which, through the Straits of Yeni-Kaleh, the Bosphorus, Dardanelles, and Gibraltar, communicates with the ocean, it has the immense advantage over the Volga of not losing itself in a land-locked basin. Hence most of the goods brought down the Volga are landed at the bend nearest the Don, and forwarded to that river. When besieging Astrakhan the Sultan Selim II. had already endeavoured to cut a canal between the two rivers, in order to transport his supplies to the Caspian. Peter the Great resumed the works, but the undertaking was abandoned, and until the middle of the present century the portage was crossed only by beasts of burden and wagons. But since 1861 the rivers have been connected by rail. Free from ice for about two hundred and forty days at its easternmost bend, the Don is sometimes so low and blocked with shoals that navigation becomes difficult even for flat-bottomed boats. During the two floods, at the melting of the ice in spring, and in the summer rains, its lower course rises eighteen to twenty feet above its normal level, overflowing its banks in several places for a distance of eighteen miles. The most important, although not the most extensive, coal-fields of Russia cover an area of about 10,000 square miles, chiefly in the southern part of the Donetz basin. Since 1865, nearly 650 beds have been found, mostly near the surface, the seams varying in thickness from one foot to twenty-four feet, and containing every description of combustible material, from the anthracite to the richest bituminous coal. The ravines here furrowing the land facilitate the study of the strata and the extraction of the mineral. Yet these valuable deposits were long neglected, and even during the Crimean war the Russians, deprived of their English supplies, were still without the necessary apparatus to avail themselves of these treasures.

Even the iron ores, which here also abound, were little utilized till that event, since when the extraction both of coal and iron has gone on continually increasing in the Donetz basin. In 1839, the yield scarcely exceeded 14,000 tons, whereas the output of the Grushova mines alone now amounts to 210,000 tons, and the total yield of the coal-pits exceeded 672,000 tons in 1872. The coal is now used by the local railways and steamers of the Don, Sea of Azov, and Euxine.

Already reduced in extent by the terrestrial revolutions which separated it from the Caspian, the Sea of Azov has been further diminished in historic times, although far less than might be supposed from the local traditions. No doubt Herodotus gives the Palus Mæotis an equal area to that of the Euxine. But as soon as the Greeks had visited and founded settlements on this inland sea they discovered how limited it was compared with the open sea. Nevertheless, fifteen hundred years ago it was certainly somewhat larger and deeper than at present, the alluvia of the Don having gradually narrowed its basin and raised its bed. Its outline also has been completely changed, Strabo’s description no longer answering to the actual form of its shores.

The town of Tanaïs, founded by the Greeks, at the very mouth of the Don, and which at the time of Ptolemy was already at some distance from the coast, has ceased to exist. But the architectural remains and inscriptions discovered by Leontiyev between Siniavka and the village of Nedoigovka, show that its site was about six miles from the old mouth of the Great Don, since changed to a dry bed. The course of the main stream has been deflected southwards, and here is the town of Azov, for a time the successor of Tanaïs in strategic and commercial importance. But where the flow is most abundant, there also the alluvium encroaches most rapidly, and the delta would increase even at a still more accelerated rate for the fierce east and north-east gales prevailing for a great part of the year. The sedimentary matter brought down, in the proportion of about one to 1,200 of fluid, amounts altogether to 230,160,000 cubic feet, causing a mean annual advance of nearly twenty-two feet.

The Gulf of Taganrog, about eighty miles long and forming the north-east extremity of the sea, may, on the whole, be regarded as a simple continuation of the Don, as regards both the character of its water and its current, and the windings of its navigable channel. This gulf, with a mean depth of from ten to twelve and nowhere exceeding twenty-four feet, seems to have diminished by nearly two feet since the first charts, dating from the time of Peter the Great. But a comparison of the soundings taken at various times is somewhat difficult, as the exact spots where they were taken and the kind of feet employed are somewhat doubtful, not to mention the state of the weather, and especially the direction of the winds during the operations. Under the influence of the winds the level of the sea may be temporarily raised or lowered at various points as much as ten or even sixteen or seventeen feet. The mean depth of the whole sea is about thirty-two feet, which, for an area of 14,217 square miles, would give an approximate volume of 13,000 billion cubic feet, or about four times that of Lake Geneva. The bed, composed, like the surrounding steppes, of argillaceous sands, unbroken anywhere by a single rock, is covered, at an extremely low rate of progress, with fresh strata, in which organic remains are mingled with the sandy detritus of the shores. If a portion of the sedimentary matter brought down by the Don were not carried out to the Euxine, the inner sea would be filled up in the space of 56,500 years.

THE COLUMBIA

J. BODDAM-WHETHAM

The Mackenzie River flows through the plain, and is singularly beautiful. Great blocks of basalt come sheer down to the water’s edge, and are divided naturally with great exactitude into huge segments. Their yellow and brown colours are reflected with wondrous effect on the surface of the stream. After a few most pleasant days, passed in the neighbourhood of Eugene City, I went on to Oregon City, and there remained to visit the Falls of the Willamette.

The river narrows near the town, and the water, rushing very swiftly, is precipitated down a fall of about fifty feet. The rocks on either side are of deep black basalt; and these huge walls, when viewed from the south, are extremely grand. It is only when they are seen from below that the mind is fully impressed with the magnificence of these falls. They have been worn into a horseshoe form by the action of the stream, and the river plunges into the depths below in great curves and sweeping currents. Masses of broken basalt show their heads amidst the rush of foaming waters, and altogether there is a noise, mist, and confusion enough to justify the Oregonians in their pride of their miniature Niagara. Formerly, these falls were the only obstruction to the free navigation of the river, but now it is overcome by the construction of locks, which have been built in the most substantial manner. The scenery of the river is very picturesque and diversified, and a lovely panorama of hill and dale, water and forest is continually passing before the view.

Portland had lately been nearly destroyed by fire, consequently I had not a good opportunity of judging of the town. It is, however, beautifully situated on the Willamette River, and is surrounded by magnificent forests. There are some delightful drives through the woods, one especially to a place called the White House, through a succession of glades and glens full of splendid trees and sweet-scented shrubs, and with views of peculiar quiet loveliness.

The Willamette runs into the Columbia River about twelve miles below Portland; so, taking the morning steamer, I prepared to ascend that river, which for grandeur of scenery is not surpassed by any river (with the exception, perhaps, of the Fraser) on the American continent.

We started so early that a grey fog swallowed up everything, and the only objects visible were the paddle-boxes and the funnel.

We steamed very slowly and cautiously down the Willamette, and as we approached the junction of that river with the Columbia the mist lifted. As it slowly crept back to the shores and up the hills and away to the north, mountains, sky and river came out with intense brilliancy and colour under the rays of the rising sun.

Wonderful forests extended from the far distance down to the very edge of the river. Beeches, oaks, pines, and firs of enormous size formed a sombre background, against which the maple and ash flamed out in their early autumn tints. On the north, the four stately snow-crowned mountains, Rainier, St. Helen’s, Jefferson, and Adams lifted themselves, rose-flushed, high up in the heavens; the great river flowed rapidly and smoothly between mountain shores, from a mile to a mile and a quarter apart, and the bold rocky heights towered thousands of feet in the air.

The mountains line the river for miles. When occasionally a deep ravine opens you catch a glimpse of distant levels, bounded, in their turn, by the never-ending chain of mountains.

There is a rare combination, too, of beauty about these mountains; vegetation and great variety of colour heightening the picturesque effect of the huge masses of bold bare rock. Now and then the cliffs impeded the flow of the river, which then ran, disturbed and dangerous, between rocky islands and sand-bars. Often the agitated waters became gradually calm and formed long narrow lakes, without any apparent outlet, until a sudden turn showed a passage through the lofty walls into another link of the water-chain.

Sometimes a cataract of marvellous beauty came leaping down the rocks from a height of 200 and 300 feet.

The Multanomah Falls in particular are most beautiful, possessing both the swift resistless rush of the downpour of water and that broken picturesque outline which is the principal charm of a fall.

Castle Rock, a huge boulder with basaltic columns like those of Staffa, stands out grandly and alone from a feathery mass of cotton-wood, whose golden splendour rivals in beauty that of the spreading dark green boughs of the pines, whilst the contrast of colour heightens the effect of each brilliant hue.

On the crest of the rock a fringe of pine trees, growing out of the bare stone and dwarfed to insignificance, shows the vast height of this rifted dome.

And now we are approaching Cape Horn, whose ramparts rise sheer and straight, like a columnar wall, 800 feet high.

This majestic portal forms a worthy entrance to the cascades. Fierce, seething rapids extend for six miles up the river, and the track of the “portage” runs near the water’s edge for the entire distance. The river is narrowed here by lofty heights of trap rock, and the bed itself is nothing but sharp gigantic rocks, sometimes hidden by the water and sometimes forming small islands, between which the foaming torrent rushes with tremendous uproar.

Near where the “portage” begins, a relic of Indian warfare, in the shape of an old block-house, stands under the fir-trees.

A small party of white men held a very large body of Indians at bay for several days in 1856; and as the provisions ran short, a grand attack was made on the red men, who were totally routed with great slaughter.

The scene in this gorge is wild in the extreme. Passing Rooster Rock, the mountain-sides approach each other, and the river flows faster and fiercer; the pillared walls rise sometimes to a height of nearly 3,000 feet, and the wind roaring through the ravine beats up huge waves and adds to the wild grandeur of the view. Whenever the mountains recede to the south, Mount Hood fills the horizon. Rising 14,000 feet, its snow-covered head shines out magnificently against the blue sky, with unvarying grandeur and a strangely attractive form.

Soon we pass an Indian burial-ground called Caffin Rock, a more desolate slope, covered with rude monuments of rock and circular heaps of piled grey stones.

Dalles City, where we now arrive, ranks as the second place of importance in Oregon. It takes its name from the “dales” or rough flag-stones, which impede the river, making narrow crooked channels, and thereby causing another “portage” for a distance of fifteen miles. Above the town the scene changes; the cliffs disappear, and from splendid forests and mountains we pass into a region of sand and desert. One tall pillar of red rock, overlooking the sandy waste, stands up forlorn and battered, as if it were the last fragment of a giant peak; and numbers of birds hovering over it seem to regard it as their special observatory.

Hot white sand is everywhere, and the wind scatters it about in a most uncomfortable manner, covering the track and half-stifling you in its blinding showers. The river scenery is very fine all along this passage, the Dalles being a succession of rapids, falls, and eddying currents.

Although it was late in the season hundreds of salmon were still ascending, and on the flat shore-rocks were several Indian lodges; their occupants busily engaged in spearing and catching the fish.

Their usual mode of catching salmon is by means of nets fastened to long handles. They erect wooden scaffolds by the riverside among the rocks, and there await the arrival of the fish--scooping up thirty or forty per hour. They are also very skilful at spearing them; rarely missing a fair mark.

At one of the falls we saw a most treacherous contrivance. A large tree with all its branches lopped off had been brought to the edge of the river and there fastened, with its smaller end overhanging the foaming fall. A large willow basket, about ten feet deep and over twenty feet in circumference, was suspended at the end. The salmon in its efforts to leap the fall would tumble in the basket, and an Indian seated in it would then knock the fish on the head with a club and throw it on shore.

This mode requires relays of men, as they soon get almost drowned by the quantity of spray and water. Very often, between two and three hundred salmon are caught in a day in this manner. We saw about twenty, averaging in weight from five to twenty pounds, caught in the hour during which we watched the process. But the hook-nosed salmon--coarse, nasty fish--were the most abundant. They always appear in the autumn, and are found everywhere. The salmon are in their greatest perfection in the Columbia River towards the end of June. The best variety is called the “chinook,” and weighs from twenty to forty pounds. This species is generally accompanied in its ascent by a smaller variety, weighing on an average about ten pounds, and which is also extremely good eating. Gradually as the salmon go higher and higher up the river, their flesh changes from a bright red to a paler colour until it becomes quite white. There are such enormous quantities of them that they can be easily jerked on shore with a stick, and they actually jostle each other out of the water. It is estimated that over 500,000 salmon were taken out of the Columbia River during the year 1872. There is a perfectly true story of a traveller who, when riding, had to cross a stream running from the Cascade Mountains, at a spot where the fish were toiling up in thousands; and so quickly were they packed as to impede the progress of the horse, which became so frightened as almost to unseat his rider.

When the salmon are caught, the squaws cure them by splitting them and drying the pieces upon wickerwork scaffoldings. Afterwards they smoke them over fires of fir branches. The wanton destruction and waste of these fish is terrible. In the season the Indians will only take the fish in the highest condition, and those that do not satisfy their fastidious tastes are thrown back mutilated and dying into the water. Even when they have killed sufficient to last them for years, they still go to the falls and catch and spear all they can, leaving the beautiful silvery salmon to rot on the stones. Salmon ought certainly to have “Excelsior” for a motto. Always moving higher and higher, they are never content, but continue the ascent of the river as far as possible. They go on till they drop, or become so weak and torn from rubbing against the rocks and against one another, that they are pushed into shallows by the stronger ones and die from want of water. Out of the hosts that ascend the rivers, it is generally supposed that a very small proportion indeed ever find their way back to the sea.

Just below the Great Salmon Falls the whole volume of the stream rushes through a channel hardly one hundred and fifty feet in width. At the falls themselves the river is nearly a mile across, and pours over a rocky wall stretching from shore to shore and about twenty feet high. It is fascinating in the extreme to watch the determined creatures as they shoot up the rapids with wonderful agility. They care neither for the seething torrent nor for the deep still pools, and with a rush--and with clenched teeth, perhaps--they dart up like a silver arrow, and defying rock and fall, are at length safe in the smooth haven above.

THE PO

GEORGE G. CHISHOLM

The northern plain of Italy, whose area is estimated at about 16,450 square miles, or about half that of Scotland, is a geographical unit of the most unmistakable kind. It is, indeed, made up of many river basins, but these are all of one character and without marked lines of delimitation. By far the greater part of the area belongs to the basin of the Po, and the rivers that do not belong to that basin present a general parallelism to the tributaries of the Po. The general slope of the plain is that indicated by the course of its main river, from west to east, but there is also a slope from north to south, and another from south to north, determining the general direction of at least the upper portions of the numerous affluents descending from the Alps and the Apennines. But before reaching the main stream, these affluents are affected in their general direction by the general easterly slope of the plain; that is to say, their course changes more or less to south-easterly (Dora Baltea, Sesia, Ticino, Adda, Oglio, Mincio), or north-easterly (Tanaro, Scrivia, Trebbia, Taro, Secchia, Panaro), and the farthest east they are the larger is the proportion of the entire course deflected in this manner. In the most easterly portion of the plain, lying west of the Adriatic, so marked is this effect that the rivers (Adige, Brenta, Piave, Livenza) are carried to the sea before reaching the Po. North of the Adriatic the slope and the general direction of the rivers (Tagliamento, Stella, Cormor) become wholly southerly.

Since ancient times the Po has been recognized as rising to the height of 6,400 feet in the marshy valley of Piano del Re at the foot of Monte Viso, the ancient Vesulus, and after a course of only twenty-one miles and a fall of 5,250 feet, it enters the plain at the bridge of Revello, where its middle course may be said to commence. Fed by the “aged snows” of the Alps, and by the heavy rains of the Alps and Apennines, it is already at Turin, where it receives from the west the Dora Riparia, a navigable stream with a width of 525 feet. At the mouth of the Ticino, the outlet of the Lago Maggiore, its lower course may be said to commence. Thence onwards it winds sluggishly across the great plains of

Fruitful Lombardy,
The pleasant garden of great Italy,

with a mean depth of about six and one-half to fifteen and one-half feet, and a fall not exceeding 0.3:1,000, so that the waters could hardly move onwards were it not for the impetus imparted by the numerous mountain torrents which it receives at an acute angle. At last, charged thick with sediment, it passes onwards through the mouths that intersect its muddy delta into the Adriatic.

In this part of its course, artificial embankments have been found necessary to protect the surrounding country from inundation, and from Cremona onwards these dykes, in part of unknown antiquity, are continuous. After receiving the Mincio, the last tributary on the north, the Po assumes a south-easterly direction, which in ancient times and during the Middle Ages down to about 1150, it maintained to its mouths, passing Ferrara on the south, and then dividing into two main arms, the Po di Volano to the north, and the Po di Primaro to the south of the Valli di Comacchio. But about that date, it is said, the people of Ficarolo cut the dyke on the north side at Stellata, and thus gave rise to a new mouth, known first as the Po di Venezia, now as the Po della Maestra, by which the entire volume of the river now runs eastwards, till it breaks up into several small branches at the delta. Since then the arm of the Po between Stulata and Ferrara has become silted up. Since 1577 the Panaro which formerly entered this arm at Ferrara has gradually moved its mouth backwards till it enters the main stream just below Stellata. The Po di Volano, which in the Second Century B. C. was the most accessible mouth for shipping and afterwards the main mouth, has now become wholly detached from the Po, and merely serves as a drainage canal for the surrounding marshes, while the Po di Primaro has been utilized since 1770 as the mouth for the regulated Remo.

Long before the historic period, tens of thousands of years ago, but which geologists call recent, the great valley was an arm of the sea; for beneath the gravels and alluvia that form the soils of Piedmont and Lombardy, sea-shells of living species are found in well-known unconsolidated strata at no great depth. At this period the lakes of Como, Maggiore, and Garda may have been fiords, though much less deep than now. Later still, the Alpine valleys through which the affluents of the Po run were full to the brim with the huge old glaciers already referred to.

When we consider the vast size of the moraines shed from the ancient glaciers that fed the Po, it is evident that at all times, but especially during floods, vast havoc must often have occurred among the masses of loose _débris_. Stones, sand, and mud, rolled along the bottom and borne on in suspension, must have been scattered across the plains by the swollen waters.

It will thus be easily understood how the vast plains that bound the Po and its tributaries were gradually formed by the constant annual increase of river gravels and finer alluvia, and how these sediments rose in height by the overflow of the waters, and steadily encroached upon the sea by the growth of the delta. The fact that the drainage line of the plain lies not in the middle but farther from the Alps than the Apennines, shows that in this process the loftier range on the north has contributed more than the lower one to the south. And this process, begun thousands of years before history began, has largely altered the face of the country within historic times, and is powerfully in action at the present day.

It has been estimated by Sir Archibald Geikie that the area drained by the Po is on an average being lowered one foot in 729 years, and a corresponding amount of sediment carried away by the river.

It is hard to get at the historical records of the river more than two thousand years ago, though we may form a good guess as to its earlier geological history. Within the historical period extensive lakes and marshes (some of them probably old sea lagoons) lay within its plains, since gradually filled with sediment by periodical floods. The great lines of dykes that have been erected to guard against those floods have introduced an element that modifies this process. The result has been that the alluvial flats on either side of the river outside the dykes have long received but little addition of surface sediment, and their level is nearly stationary. It thus happens that most of the sediment that in old times would have been spread by overflows across the land is now hurried along towards the Adriatic, there, with the help of the Adige, steadily to advance the far-spreading alluvial flats that form the delta of the two rivers. But the confined river, unable by annual floods to dispose of part of its sediment, just as the dykes were increased in height, gradually raised its bottom by the deposition there of a portion of the transported material, so that the risk of occasional floods is again renewed. All these dangers have been increased by the wanton destruction of the forests of the Alps and Apennines, for when the shelter of the wood is gone, the heavy rains of summer easily wash the soil from the slopes down into the rivers, and many an upland pasture has by this process been turned into bare rock. In this way it happens that during the historical period the quantity of detritus borne onwards by the Po has much increased; and whereas between the years 1200 and 1600 the delta advanced on an average only about twenty-five yards a year, from 1600 to 1800 the annual advance has been more than seventy-five yards. Between 1823 and 1893 the deposits at the Po di Maestra and the Po di Goro advanced on an average 260 feet yearly, those of the Po di Tolle 315 feet, and those of the Po della Gnocca 110 feet. The area of the Po delta has increased within that time by twenty and one-half square miles, and that of the whole coast from 44° 20′ to the Austrian frontier by 29.8 square miles. Besides the Po and some of its chief tributaries, the Adige is the only river in the northern plain of Italy of importance as a waterway; and even it, though navigable for vessels of considerable size, as high as Trent in the Tirol, where there is a depth of from thirteen to sixteen feet, is navigable only with great difficulty in consequence of the great rapidity of its course. Boats can descend from Trent to Verona (fifty miles) in twenty-four hours, but for the ascent require from five to seven days. The country on the banks of this river is much subject to inundations, protection against which is afforded, as on the Po, by dykes, which begin about twelve miles below Verona.

THE MENAM

MRS. UNSWORTH