“No description,” says Lieutenant Ives,
one of the first explorers of this river, “can
convey the idea of the varied and majestic grandeur
of this peerless waterway. Wherever the river
turns, the entire panorama changes. Stately facades,
august cathedrals, amphitheatres, rotundas, castellated
walls, and rows of time-stained ruins, surmounted
by every form of tower, minaret, dome and spire, have
been moulded from the cyclopean masses of rock that
form the mighty defile.” Who will say, after
this, that water is not the grandest of all sculptors,
as it cuts through hundreds of miles of rock, forming
such magnificent granite groups, not only unsurpassed
but unequalled by any of the works of man?
But we must not look upon water only as a cutting
instrument, for it does more than merely carve out
land in one place, it also carries it away and lays
it down elsewhere; and in this it is more like a modeller
in clay, who smooths off the material from one part
of his figure to put it upon another.
Running water is not only always carrying away mud,
but at the same time laying it down here and there
wherever it flows. When a torrent brings down
stones and gravel from the mountains, it will depend
on the size and weight of the pieces how long they
will be in falling through the water. If you take
a handful of gravel and throw it into a glass full
of water, you will notice that the stones in it will
fall to the bottom at once, the grit and coarse sand
will take longer in sinking, and lastly, the fine
sand will be an hour or two in settling down, so that
the water becomes clear. Now, suppose that this
gravel were sinking in the water of a river.
The stones would be buoyed up as long as the river
was very full and flowed very quickly, but they would
drop through sooner than the coarse sand. The
coarse sand in its turn would begin to sink as the
river flowed more slowly, and would reach the bottom
while the fine sand was still borne on. Lastly,
the fine sand would sink through very, very slowly,
and only settle in comparatively still water.
From this it will happen that stones will generally
lie near to the bottom of torrents at the foot of
the banks from which they fall, while the gravel will
be carried on by the stream after it leaves the mountains.
This too, however, will be laid down when the river
comes into a more level country and runs more slowly.
Or it may be left together with the finer mud in a
lake, as in the lake of Geneva, into which the Rhone
flows laden with mud and comes out at the other end
clear and pure. But if no lake lies in the way
the finer earth will still travel on, and the river
will take up more and more as it flows, till at last
it will leave this too on the plains across which
it moves sluggishly along, or will deposit it at its
mouth when it joins the sea.
