Various - Graham's Magazine, Vol. XLI, No. 5, November 1852

Air “Pray, Goody, PLEASE TO MODERATE.”

Rivers constitute an important part of the aqueous portion of the globe; with the great lines of water, with streams and rivulets, they form a numerous family, of which lakes, springs, or the meltings of ice and snow, upon the summits of high mountain chains, are the parents. The Shannon has its source in a lake; the Rhone in a glacier; and the Abyssinian branch of the Nile in a confluence of fountains. The country where some of the mightiest rivers of the globe have their rise has not yet been sufficiently explored to render their true source ascertainable. The origin of others is doubtful, owing to a number of rills presenting equal claims to be considered as the river-head; but many are clearly referable to a single spring, the current of which is speedily swelled by tributary waters, ultimately flowing in broad and deep channels to the sea. Inglis, who wandered on foot through many lands, had a fancy, which he generally indulged, to visit the sources of rivers, when the chances of his journey threw him in their vicinity. Such a pilgrimage will often repay the traveler, by the scenes of picturesque and secluded beauty into which it leads him; and even when the primal fount is insignificant in itself, and the surrounding landscape exhibits the tamest features, there is a reward in the associations that are instantly wakened up – the thought of a humble and modest commencement issuing in a long and victorious career – of the tiny rill, proceeding, by gradual advances, to become an ample stream, fertilizing by its exudations and rolling on to meet the tides of the ocean, bearing the merchandise of cities upon its bosom. The Duddon, one of the most picturesque of the English rivers, oozes up through a bed of moss near the top of Wrynose Fell, a desolate solitude, yet remarkable for its huge masses of protruding crag, and the varied and vivid colors of the mosses watered by the stream. Petrarch’s letters and verses have given celebrity to the source of the Sorques – the spring of Vaucleuse, which bursts in an imposing manner out of a cavern, and forms at once a copious torrent. The Scamandar is one of the most remarkable rivers for the grandeur of its source – a yawning chasm in Mount Gargarus, shaded with enormous plane-trees, and surrounded with high cliffs from which the river impetuously dashes in all the greatness of the divine origin assigned to it by ancient fable. To discover the source of the Nile, hid from the knowledge of all antiquity, was the object of Bruce’s adventurous journey; and we can readily enter into his emotions, as he stood by the two fountains, after the toils and hazard he had braved. “It is easier to guess,” he remarks, “than to describe the situation of my mind at that moment – standing in that spot which had baffled the genius, industry, and inquiry of both ancients and moderns, for the course of three thousand years. Kings had attempted this discovery at the head of armies; and each expedition was distinguished from the last, only by the difference of the numbers which had perished, and agreed alone in the disappointment which had uniformly, and without exception, followed them all. Fame, riches and honor, had been held out for a series of ages to every individual of those myriads these princes commanded, without having produced one man capable of gratifying the curiosity of his sovereign, or wiping off this stain upon the enterprise and abilities of mankind, or adding this desideratum for the encouragement of geography. Though a mere private Briton, I triumphed here, in my own mind, over kings and their armies; and every comparison was leading nearer and nearer to presumption, when the place itself where I stood – the object of my vain-glory – suggested what depressed my short-lived triumphs. I was but a few minutes arrived at the sources of the Nile, through numberless dangers and sufferings, the least of which would have overwhelmed me, but for the continual goodness and protection of Providence: I was, however, but then half through my journey; and all those dangers, which I had already passed, awaited me again on my return. I found a despondency gaining ground fast upon me, and blasting the crown of laurels I had too rashly woven for myself.” Bruce, however, labored under an error, in supposing the stream he had followed to be the main branch of the Nile. He had traced to its springs the smaller of the two great rivers which contribute to form this celebrated stream. The larger arm issues from a more remote part of Africa, and has not yet been ascended to its source.

Upon examining the map of a country, we see many of its rivers traveling in opposite directions, and emptying their waters into different seas, although their sources frequently lie in the immediate neighborhood of each other. The springs of the Missouri, which proceed south-east to the Gulf of Mexico, and those of the Columbia, which flow north-west to the Pacific Ocean, are only a mile apart, while those of some of the tributaries of the Amazon, flowing north, and the La Plata, flowing south, are closely contiguous. There is a part of Volhynia, of no considerable extent, which sends off its waters, north and south, to the Black and Baltic seas; while, from the field on which the battle of Naseby was fought, the Avon, Trent, and Nen receive affluents, which reach the ocean at opposite coasts of the island, through the Humber, the Wash, and the Bristol Channel. The field in question is an elevated piece of table-land in the centre of England. The district referred to, where rivers proceeding to the Baltic and the Euxine take their rise, is a plateau about a thousand feet above the level of the sea.