Part 22
The Niagara season was over; the chatter of sight-seers had ceased, and the scene presented itself as one of holy seclusion and beauty. I went down to the river’s edge, where the weird loneliness seemed to increase. The basin is enclosed by high and almost precipitous banks--covered, at the time, with russet woods. A kind of mystery attaches itself to gyrating water, due perhaps to the fact that we are to some extent ignorant of the direction of its force. It is said that, at certain points of the whirlpool, pine-trees are sucked down, to be ejected mysteriously elsewhere. The water is of the brightest emerald-green. The gorge through which it escapes is narrow, and the motion of the river swift though silent. The surface is steeply inclined, but it is perfectly unbroken. There are no lateral waves, no ripples with their breaking bubbles to raise a murmur; while the depth is here too great to allow the inequality of the bed to ruffle the surface. Nothing can be more beautiful than this sloping liquid mirror formed by the Niagara in sliding from the whirlpool.
A connected image of the origin and progress of the cataract is easily obtained. Walking northwards from the village of Niagara Falls by the side of the river, we have to our left the deep and comparatively narrow gorge, through which the Niagara flows. The bounding cliffs of this gorge are from 300 to 350 feet high. We reach the whirlpool, trend to the north-east, and after a little time gradually resume our northward course. Finally, at about seven miles from the present falls, we come to the edge of a declivity, which informs us that we have been hitherto walking on table-land. At some hundreds of feet below us is a comparatively level plain, which stretches to Lake Ontario. The declivity marks the end of the precipitous gorge of the Niagara. Here the river escapes from its steep mural boundaries, and in a widened bed pursues its way to the lake which finally receives its waters.
The fact that in historic times, even within the memory of man, the fall has sensibly receded, prompts the question, How far has this recession gone? At what point did the ledge which thus continually creeps backwards begin its retrograde course? To minds disciplined in such researches the answer has been, and will be--At the precipitous declivity which crossed the Niagara from Lewiston on the American to Queenston on the Canadian side. Over this transverse barrier the united affluents of all the upper lakes once poured their waters, and here the work of erosion began. The dam, moreover, was demonstrably of sufficient height to cause the river above it to submerge Goat Island; and this would perfectly account for the finding, by Sir Charles Lyell, Mr. Hall, and others, in the sand and gravel of the island, the same fluviatile shells as are now found in the Niagara River higher up. It would also account for those deposits along the sides of the river, the discovery of which enabled Lyell, Hall, and Ramsay to reduce to demonstration the popular belief that the Niagara once flowed through a shallow valley.
The vast comparative erosive energy of the Horseshoe Fall comes strikingly into view when it and the American Fall are compared together. The American branch of the river is cut at a right angle by the gorge of the Niagara. Here the Horseshoe Fall was the real excavator. It cut the rock, and formed the precipice, over which the American Fall tumbles. But, since its formation, the erosive action of the American Fall has been almost nil, while the Horseshoe has cut its way for 500 yards across the end of Goat Island, and is now doubling back to excavate its channel parallel to the length of the island. This point, which impressed me forcibly, has not, I have just learned, escaped the acute observation of Professor Ramsay. The river bends; the Horseshoe immediately accommodates itself to the bending, and will follow implicitly the direction of the deepest water in the upper stream. The flexures of the gorge are determined by those of the river channel above it. Were the Niagara centre above the fall sinuous, the gorge would obediently follow its sinuosities. Once suggested, no doubt geographers will be able to point out many examples of this action. The Zambesi is thought to present a great difficulty to the erosion theory, because of the sinuosity of the chasm below the Victoria Falls. But, assuming the basalt to be of tolerably uniform texture, had the river been examined before the formation of this sinuous channel, the present zigzag course of the gorge below the fall could, I am persuaded, have been predicted, while the sounding of the present river would enable us to predict the course to be pursued by the erosion in the future.
But not only has the Niagara River cut the gorge; it has carried away the chips of its own workshop. The shale, being probably crumbled, is easily carried away. But at the base of the fall we find the huge boulders already described, and by some means or other these are removed down the river. The ice which fills the gorge in winter, and which grapples with the boulders, has been regarded as the transporting agent. Probably it is so to some extent. But erosion acts without ceasing on the abutting points of the boulders, thus withdrawing their support and urging them gradually down the river. Solution also does its portion of the work. That solid matter is carried down is proved by the difference of depth between the Niagara River and Lake Ontario, where the river enters it. The depth falls from seventy-two feet to twenty feet, in consequence of the deposition of solid matter caused by the diminished motion of the river.
In conclusion, we may say a word regarding the proximate future of Niagara. At the rate of excavation assigned to it by Sir Charles Lyell, namely, a foot a year, five thousand years or so will carry the Horseshoe Fall far higher than Goat Island. As the gorge recedes it will drain, as it has hitherto done, the banks right and left of it, thus leaving a nearly level terrace between Goat Island and the edge of the gorge. Higher up it will totally drain the American branch of the river; the channel of which in due time will become cultivable land. The American Fall will then be transformed into a dry precipice, forming a simple continuation of the cliffy boundary of the Niagara gorge. At the place occupied by the fall at this moment we shall have the gorge enclosing a right angle, a second whirlpool being the consequence. To those who visit Niagara a few millenniums hence I leave the verification of this prediction. All that can be said is, that if the causes now in action continue to act, it will prove itself literally true.
THE NIAGARA RIVER
G. K. GILBERT
The Niagara River flows from Lake Erie to Lake Ontario. The shore of Erie is more than 300 feet higher than the shore of Ontario; but if you pass from the higher shore to the lower, you do not descend at a uniform rate. Starting from Lake Erie and going northwards, you travel upon a plain--not level, but with only gentle undulations--until you approach the shore of Lake Ontario, and then suddenly you find yourself on the brink of a high bluff, or cliff, overlooking the lower lake and separated from it only by a narrow strip of sloping plain.
Where the Niagara River leaves Lake Erie at Buffalo and enters the plain, a low ridge of rock crosses its path, and in traversing this its water is troubled; but it soon becomes smooth, spreads out broadly and indolently loiters on the plain. For three-fourths of the distance it cannot be said to have a valley, it rests upon the surface of the plateau; but then its habit suddenly changes. By the short rapid at Goat Island and by the cataract itself the water of the river is dropped two hundred feet down into the plain, and thence to the cliff at Lewiston it races headlong through a deep and narrow gorge. From Lewiston to Lake Ontario there are no rapids. The river is again broad, and its channel is scored so deeply in the littoral plain that the current is relatively slow, and the level of its water surface varies but slightly from that of the lake.
The narrow gorge that contains the river from the Falls to Lewiston is a most peculiar and noteworthy feature. Its width rarely equals the fourth of a mile, and its depth to the bottom of the river ranges from two hundred to five hundred feet. Its walls are so steep that opportunities for climbing up and down them are rare, and in these walls one may see the geologic structure of the plateau.
The contour of the cataract is subject to change. From time to time blocks of rock break away, falling into the pool below, and new shapes are then given to the brink over which the water leaps. Many such falls of rock have taken place since the white man occupied the banks of the river, and the breaking away of a very large section is still a recent event. By such observation we are assured that the extent of the gorge is increasing at its end, that it is growing longer, and that the cataract is the cause of its extension.
This determination is the first element in the history of the river. A change is in progress before our eyes. The river’s history, like human history, is being enacted, and from that which occurs we can draw inferences concerning what has occurred, and what will occur. We can look forward to the time when the gorge now traversing the fourth part of the width of the plateau will completely divide it, so that the Niagara will drain Lake Erie to the bottom. We can look back to the time when there was no gorge, but when the water flowed on the top of the plain to its edge, and the Falls of Niagara were at Lewiston.
We may think of the river as labouring at a task--the task of sawing in two the plateau. The task is partly accomplished. When it is done the river will assume some other task. Before it was begun what did the river do?
How can we answer this question? The surplus water discharge from Lake Erie could not have flowed by this course to Lake Ontario without sawing at the plateau. Before it began the cutting of the gorge it did not flow along this line. It may have flowed somewhere else, but if so it did not constitute the Niagara River. The commencement of the cutting of the Niagara gorge is the beginning of the history of the Niagara River.
The river began its existence during the final retreat of the great ice sheet, or, in other words, during the series of events that closed the age of ice in America. During the course of its history the length of the river has suffered some variation by reason of the successive fall and rise of the level of Lake Ontario. It was at first a few miles shorter than now; then it became suddenly a few miles longer, and its present length was gradually acquired.
With the change in the position of its mouth there went a change in the height of its mouth; and the rate at which it eroded its channel was affected thereby. The influence on the rate of erosion was felt chiefly along the lower course of the river between Lewiston and Fort Niagara.
The volume of the river has likewise been inconstant. In early days, when the lakes levied a large tribute on the melting glacier, the Niagara may have been a larger river than now; but there was a time when the discharge from the upper lakes avoided the route by Lake Erie, and then the Niagara was a relatively small stream.
The great life work of the river has been the digging of the gorge through which it runs from the cataract to Lewiston. The beginning of its life was the beginning of that task. The length of the gorge is in some sense a measure of the river’s age.
The river sprang from a great geologic revolution, the banishment of the dynasty of cold, and so its lifetime is a geologic epoch; but from first to last man has been a witness to its toil, and so its history is interwoven with the history of man. The human comrade of the river’s youth was not, alas! a reporter with a notebook, else our present labour would be light. He has even told us little of himself. We only know that on a gravelly beach of Lake Iroquois, now the Ridge Road, he rudely gathered stones to make a hearth and built a fire; and the next storm breakers, forcing back the beach, buried and thus preserved, to gratify yet whet our curiosity, hearth, ashes and charred sticks.
In these Darwinian days we cannot deem primeval the man possessed of the Promethean art of fire, and so his presence on the scene adds zest to the pursuit of the Niagara problem. Whatever the antiquity of the great cataract may be found to be, the antiquity of man is greater.
THE MEUSE
ESTHER SINGLETON
The Meuse, or Maas, has the distinction of belonging to three countries,--France, Belgium and Holland. In its long journey of 580 miles to the sea, it passes through varied and beautiful scenery, including the Forest of Ardennes, so famous in the Charlemagne romances and in the turbulent period of the Middle Ages; then through the vine-lands and hop-gardens so often laid waste by battles in Belgium; and finally through the flat lands of Holland where it has afforded inspiration to many painters.
Rising in France in the south of the Department Haute Marne near the Monts Faucilles, it crosses the Department Vosges, where, between Bazeilles and Noncourt, it disappears and has a subterranean course for three miles and a half. After crossing the Meuse and Ardennes Departments, passing by the towns of Neufchâteau, Vaucouleurs, Commercy St. Mihiel and Verdun, it reaches Sedan and enters Belgium. During the rest of its course, its name is variously Meuse, Maes, Maas and Merwede. Above Dinant it receives the Lesse and at Namur, its largest tributary, the Sambre, which almost doubles its volume. Going north-east, it flows through a narrow valley, enclosed between wooded hills and cliffs, dotted with picturesque villas and country houses, and at Liège it is joined by the Ourthe. The river now enters Dutch territory, and is henceforth called the Maas. Passing Maestricht, or Maastricht, it flows by Roermond, where it receives the Roer, and at Venlo a canal begins which connects it with the Scheldt. At Gorinchem, it receives the Waal, an arm of the Rhine. Now the Maas soon divides: the Merwede flowing west, while the southern arm falls into the Biesbosch, an estuary of the sea. On reaching Dortrecht, river and sea navigation begin. Here the Maas again divides. The Old Maas flows directly west while the northern arm joins the Lek, a second branch of the Rhine, and continues its course to Rotterdam, where the Rotte joins it. The two arms unite here and flow into the North Sea by the Hook of Holland. Schiedam and Vlardingen are the last places of importance upon its banks. Including all windings, the Meuse is 580 miles long and is navigable for about 460 miles. In the early part of its course the Meuse traverses a wide valley covered by green meadows and then flows through narrow gorges, hemmed in by high hills and cliffs. At Dinant, picturesquely situated on the right bank, at the base of limestone cliffs crowned by a fortress, it is said that Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, and his son, Charles the Bold, having captured the town, caused 800 people to be drowned in the Meuse. The river, however, quite unconscious of this tragedy, flows on beneath a pinnacle of rock called the _Roche à Bayard_, because the famous steed, Bayard, belonging to the Quatre Fils d’Aymon, left a hoof-print here as it sprang over the valley when pursued by Charlemagne. Rocks of fantastic shapes now rise above the river, which is spanned by bridges. Innumerable villas and ancestral castles peep through the thick foliage and command the cliffs. The French border is reached at Givet; and at Sedan, memorable for the battle between the French and Germans (September 1, 1870), Belgian territory is entered. The hills and valleys in the vicinity of Sedan were occupied by the Army of the Meuse.
At Namur, also grouped on the cliffs, the Meuse is crossed by several stone bridges. The citadel on a hill between the Sambre and Meuse is believed to occupy the site of the camp of the Aduatuci described by Cæsar. The Meuse, flowing through the town of Liège, forms an island which is connected with each bank by six bridges. The principal town lies on the left bank: Outremeuse is a factory town on the right bank. A fine view is afforded from the citadel (520 feet above the sea level), erected by Prince Bishop Maximilian Henry of Bavaria in 1650, on the site of earlier fortifications. The valleys of the Meuse, Ourthe and Vesdre are here bounded on the south by the Ardennes, while the Petersburg with Maestricht and the broad plains of Limburg are seen on the north. On the opposite bank of the Meuse is the Chartreuse. The river here is 460 feet wide and is crossed by several bridges, of which the Pont des Arches, rebuilt in 1860-3, dates from the Eighth Century, and is famous in local history.
After the train passes under the Chartreuse, the town of Jupille is reached, a favourite residence of Pepin of Héristal, who died here in 714. The town was often visited by Charlemagne.
The Dutch custom-house is at Eysden, where a beautiful old _château_ is seen among its trees; and on the opposite bank of the Meuse, the Petersburg rises 330 feet above the river, with the _château_ of Castert on its summit. We are now in the Dutch province of Limburg, with its capital, Maestricht, on the left bank of the Maas, the _Trajectum Superius_ of the Romans (_Trajectum ad Mosam_), the seat of a bishopric; the residence of Frankish Kings; and, later, the joint possession of Prince Bishops of Liège and the Dukes of Brabant.
At Gorinchem the river is joined by the Waal and as both streams are broad, an impressive sheet of water is the result. For a time, the river is known as the Merwede. About four miles below Gorinchem, the Biesbosch (reed forest) begins, a district of forty square miles and consisting of 100 islands formed by a destructive inundation in 1421, when seventy-two towns and villages and more than 100,000 persons perished.
This inundation also separated the next town of importance, Dordrecht, or Dort, as the Dutch call it, from the mainland. This town, one of the wealthiest towns of the Netherlands in the Middle Ages, presents a most picturesque appearance with its quaint gables, red-tiled roofs, and the lofty square tower of the Groote Kerk, which has kept watch over the Maas for six hundred years. How familiar it looks in the silvery light of early morning or when flooded with the warm golden glow of the afternoon to those who are well acquainted with the pictures of Cuyp and Jan van Goyen! Could we wander through the town, we should find much to study. There are numerous old mediæval houses in the Wynstraat; the ancient gate, Groothoofd-Poort, that had to be rebuilt in 1618; and the finest specimens of carving in Holland,--the choir-stalls of 1538-40 in the Groote Kerk. The harbour is full of boats and timber rafts that have drifted down the Rhine from the Black Forest and the _tjalks_, _praams_ and other Dutch boats, large and small, with their lee-boards (called _zwaards_) used to steady the keelless boats, and bright sails become more numerous.
The Maas now flows through typical Dutch landscapes and feeds many canals that lead to Delft and other cities.
At length we reach Rotterdam which lies on both sides of the river; the older city lies on the right bank of the Maas near its confluence with the Rotte. The many docks and canals--Koningshaven, Nieuwehaven, Haringvliet, Oudehaven, Wijnhaven, Scheepmakershaven, Leuvehaven, Zalmhaven, Westerhaven, etc., are filled with ocean-going vessels and river craft of all sizes and kinds, as well as nationalities, presenting forests of masts and innumerable funnels. The streets are animated with sailors and merchants, while the tree-bordered embankment, called the Bompjes, affords a gay promenade.
On the way to the sea, Schiedam on the Schie, is passed, and also the more interesting town of Vlaardingen, one of the oldest towns in Holland, as is evidenced by the market-place. It is the _dépôt_ for the “great fishery,” and from it a fleet of 125 boats and 1,500 men are sent forth annually. Maasluis, the next town, which takes a share in the “great fishery,” is passed, and then the open sea greets the Maas at the Hook of Holland.
THE RHONE
ANGUS B. REACH
Few travellers have much fancy for the most rapid of the great European streams. If they at all make its personal acquaintance, it is with knapsack on back, and iron-shod _bâton_ in hand--when they stand upon the mother-glacier, and watch the river-child glide brightly into air--or perhaps it is near fair Geneva, that, loitering on a wooden bridge, they mark the second start in life of the strong river, and, if they be philosophers, lament the clamorous and not cleanly Arve. Later in the river’s career--the pellucid waters of the snow are again and still more fatally fouled by the slow-running Saone which comes down by Lyons, heavy and fat with the rich mud of Burgundy. At the point of junction there, also, the tourist sometimes goes to observe the coalition of the streams, and to find out, that instead of the bigger river cleansing the smaller, the smaller utterly besmirches and begrimes the greater. So pondering over the moral, he too often takes little further heed of the Rhone; or if he does, it is as a mere beast of burden. He is bound south, and he knows that the “swift and arrowy Rhone” will add wings to the speed of steam; that stepping on board the long, long steamboat from the noble quays of Lyons at summer’s dawn, he will step ashore amid the clamour of the uproarious Avignon porters by the summer’s eve. But the day’s flight--through rocks, and vines, and corn-lands, and by ancient towns and villages, and through old bridges of stone, and modern bridges of boats, is to the conventional traveller usually nearly a blank. How different from the Rhine; no legends in the handbook, no castles, no picturesque students, no jolly Burschen choruses over pipes and beer. The steamer flies southwards. If she be one of the quickest of the Rhone fleet, and the river be in good order, she could carry you between sunrise and sunset, from the land where the chestnut and the walnut most abound, through the zone where the mulberry is almost exclusively the tree; next past the region where men are clipping, and twisting, and trimming the olive, at once sacred and classic, and, finally, fairly into the flats, where tropical rice grows out of fever-haunted swamps in the African-like jungles of the Camargue. During this flight, it is to be noted, that you have descended upwards of 600 feet, in fact, that you have been steaming down a modified water-fall, and have measured in a day, a run from a climate which may be described as temperate, to one which is, to all intents and purposes, torrid.