He who has known many rivers knows that every watercourse has an
individuality, which is no more to be analyzed than the personality of
one's dearest friend. Two rivers may flow almost side by side for a
hundred miles, separated only by a range of hills, and resemble each
other no more than two women. You may admire the one, and grant it
beauty and charm; but you will love the other, and dream of it, and
desire infinite acquaintance of it.
These differences are too subtle for definition. Superficially, two
rivers in the North Country are unlike only in this respect, that one
has cut a deep valley through the hills and flows swiftly and shallowly
to its sea, and the other has kept to the plateaus and drops leisurely
by a series of cascades and short rapids, separated by long reaches of
deep water. Otherwise their physical aspects coincide. The banks of
archaic rock are covered with a thin soil which maintains so dense a
tangle that the axe must clear a space for the smallest camp; their
overhanging borders are of cedar and alder and puckerbush and osier;
their waters are slightly colored by the juices of the swampland;
following lines of minimum resistance, they twist gently or sharply
every little way, and always to the voyager's delight, for the eye is
unprepared for a beautiful vista, as the ear for a sudden and exquisite
modulation in music.