Great Rivers of the World
FAMOUS MARVELS
AND MASTERPIECES
OF THE WORLD
As Seen and Described by Great Writers
Collected and Edited by
ESTHER SINGLETON
Famous Paintings
Great Pictures
Modern Paintings
Great Portraits
Wonders of the World
Wonders of Nature
Famous Women
Romantic Castles and Palaces
Turrets, Towers and Temples
Historic Buildings of America
Historic Landmarks of America
Great Rivers of the World
Famous Sculpture
Famous Cathedrals
Fourteen volumes in all. Profusely illustrated. Each sold separately.
You can get any of the series where you bought this book and at the
same price.
[Illustration: THE RHINE]
Great Rivers of the World
As Seen and Described
By Famous Writers
COLLECTED AND EDITED BY
ESTHER SINGLETON
_With Numerous Illustrations_
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
DODD, MEAD & COMPANY
Copyright, 1908, by
DODD, MEAD & COMPANY
_Published, November, 1908_
Preface
Rivers possess so many varied attractions and have so many claims
on the attention of the student of science and history, the
pleasure-seeker, the traveller, the poet and the painter, that no
apology need be offered for gathering into one volume selections from
the works of those who have described some of the most famous streams
of the world. Lyell says: “Rivers are the irrigators of the earth’s
surface, adding alike to the beauty of the landscape and the fertility
of the soil: they carry off impurities and every sort of waste
_débris_; and when of sufficient volume, they form the most available
of all channels of communication with the interior of continents.
They have ever been things of vitality and beauty to the poet, silent
monitors to the moralist, and agents of comfort and civilization to all
mankind.”
Thoreau says: “The Mississippi, the Ganges and the Nile, those
journeying atoms from the Rocky Mountains, the Himmaleh and Mountains
of the Moon, have a kind of personal importance in the annals of the
world--the heavens are not yet drained over their sources, but the
Mountains of the Moon still send their annual tribute to the Pasha
without fail, as they did to the Pharaohs, though he must collect the
rest of his revenue at the point of the sword. Rivers must have been
the guides which conducted the footsteps of the first travellers.
They are the constant lure, when they flow by our doors, to distant
enterprise and adventure, and, by a natural impulse, the dwellers on
their banks will at length accompany their currents to the lowlands of
the globe, or explore at their invitation the interior of continents.
They are the natural highways of all nations, not only levelling the
ground and removing obstacles from the path of the traveller, quenching
his thirst, and bearing him on their bosoms, but conducting him through
the most interesting scenery, the most populous portions of the globe,
and where the animal and vegetable kingdoms attain their greatest
perfection.”
In the following pages little will be found dealing with the material
blessings bestowed on mankind by the agency of rivers. The average
reader is more interested in the antiquarian and legendary lore of the
sources, rapids, banks and islands of a famous stream. Length of course
and volume of water are matters of no importance to lovers of the
picturesque, the venerable, or the romantic. Therefore the literature
of the Shannon is more fascinating than that of the Amazon, and the
Jordan attracts more pilgrims than the Volga. Small streams like the
Wye, the Yarrow, and the Oise consequently find a place among these
celebrated rivers.
E. S.
_New York, October, 1908._
Contents
THE RHINE _Victor Hugo_ 1
THE SEINE _A. Bowman Blake_ 8
THE GANGES _Sir William Hunter_ 19
MORNING ON THE GANGES _Pierre Loti_ 24
THE COLORADO _Henry Gannett_ 28
THE AVON _John Wilson Croker_ 34
DOWN THE ST. LAWRENCE _Charles Dickens_ 46
THE TIGRIS _George Rawlinson_ 52
THE OISE _Robert Louis Stevenson_ 55
THE HUDSON _Esther Singleton_ 65
THE TIBER _Strother A. Smith_ 76
THE SHANNON _Arthur Shadwell Martin_ 87
THE DANUBE _I. Bowes_ 94
THE NIGER _J. Hampden Jackson_ 101
THE AMAZON _Joseph Jones_ 107
THE YANGTSE CHIANG _W. R. Carles_ 113
THE THAMES _Charles Dickens, Jr._ 122
THE CONNECTICUT _Timothy Dwight_ 131
MOSEL _F. Warre Cornish_ 138
THE IRRAWADDY _Emily A. Richings_ 144
THE CLYDE _Robert Walker_ 155
THE VOLGA _Elisée Reclus_ 162
THE CONGO _J. Howard Reed_ 169
THE MACKENZIE RIVER _William Ogilvie_ 177
THE LOIRE _I. Victor Hugo_ 185
_II. Honoré de Balzac_ 189
THE POTOMAC _Esther Singleton_ 191
THE EUPHRATES _George Rawlinson_ 197
THE WYE _A. R. Quinton_ 201
THE INDIAN RIVER _L. C. Bryan_ 208
THE NILE _I. J. Howard Reed_ 213
_II. Isaac Taylor_ 219
THE DON _Elisée Reclus_ 223
THE COLUMBIA _J. Boddam-Whetham_ 228
THE PO _George G. Chisholm_ 235
THE MENAM _Mrs. Unsworth_ 241
THE MERRIMACK _Henry D. Thoreau_ 249
THE YEN-E-SAY _Henry Seebohm_ 254
THE YARROW _John MacWhirter_ 263
THE MISSISSIPPI _Alexander D. Anderson_ 272
THE ZAMBESI _Henry Drummond_ 280
THE URUGUAY _Ernest William White_ 286
THE TWEED _Sir Thomas Dick Lauder_ 293
NIAGARA _John Tyndall_ 304
THE NIAGARA RIVER _G. K. Gilbert_ 312
THE MEUSE _Esther Singleton_ 316
THE RHONE _Angus B. Reach_ 321
THE YUKON _William Ogilvie_ 328
THE JORDAN _Andrew Robert Fausset_ 338
THE CONCORD _Henry D. Thoreau_ 343
THE TAGUS _Arthur Shadwell Martin_ 350
THE INDUS _Edward Balfour_ 354
Illustrations
THE RHINE _Frontispiece_
THE SEINE 8
THE GANGES 20
THE COLORADO 28
THE AVON 34
THE ST. LAWRENCE 46
THE HUDSON 66
THE TIBER 76
THE SHANNON 88
THE DANUBE 94
THE THAMES 122
THE CONNECTICUT 132
THE IRRAWADDY 144
THE CLYDE 156
THE VOLGA 162
THE CONGO 170
THE LOIRE 186
THE POTOMAC 192
THE WYE 202
THE INDIAN 208
THE NILE 214
THE DON 224
THE COLUMBIA 228
THE PO 236
THE MENAM 242
THE MERRIMACK 250
THE YARROW 264
THE MISSISSIPPI 272
THE ZAMBESI 280
THE TWEED 294
THE NIAGARA 304
THE MEUSE 316
THE RHONE 322
THE JORDAN 338
THE CONCORD 344
THE TAGUS 350
THE RHINE
VICTOR HUGO
I love rivers; they do more than bear merchandise--ideas float along
their surface. Rivers, like clarions, sing to the ocean of the beauty
of the earth, the fertility of plains, and the splendour of cities.
Of all rivers, I prefer the Rhine. It is now a year, when passing the
bridge of boats at Kehl, since I first saw it. I remember that I felt
a certain respect, a sort of admiration, for this old, this classic
stream. I never think of rivers--those great works of Nature, which are
also great in history,--without emotion.
I remember the Rhone at Valserine; I saw it in 1825, in a pleasant
excursion to Switzerland, which is one of the sweet, happy
recollections of my early life. I remember with what noise, with what
ferocious bellowing, the Rhone precipitated itself into the gulf whilst
the frail bridge upon which I was standing was shaking beneath my feet.
Ah! well! since that time, the Rhone brings to my mind the idea of a
tiger,--the Rhine, that of a lion.
The evening on which I saw the Rhine for the first time, I was
impressed with the same idea. For several minutes I stood contemplating
this proud and noble river--violent, but not furious; wild, but still
majestic. It was swollen, and was magnificent in appearance, and was
washing its yellow mane, or, as Boileau says, its “slimy beard,” the
bridge of boats. Its two banks were lost in the twilight, and though
its roaring was loud, still there was tranquillity.
Yes, the Rhine is a noble river--feudal, republican, imperial--worthy,
at the same time, of France and Germany. The whole history of Europe is
combined within its two great aspects--in this flood of the warrior and
of the philosopher--in this proud stream, which causes France to bound
with joy, and by whose profound murmurings Germany is bewildered in
dreams.
The Rhine is unique; it combines the qualities of every river. Like
the Rhone, it is rapid; broad, like the Loire; encased, like the
Meuse; serpentine, like the Seine; limpid and green, like the Somme;
historical, like the Tiber; royal, like the Danube; mysterious, like
the Nile; spangled with gold, like an American river; and, like a river
of Asia, abounding with phantoms and fables.
Before the commencement of History, perhaps before the existence of
man, where the Rhine now is there was a double chain of volcanos, which
on their extinction left heaps of lava and basalt lying parallel, like
two long walls. At the same epoch the gigantic crystallizations formed
the primitive mountains; the enormous alluvions of which the secondary
mountains consist were dried up; the frightful heap, which is now cold,
and snow accumulated on them, from which two great streams issued, the
one--flowing towards the north, crossed the plains, encountered the
sides of the extinguished volcanos, and emptied itself into the ocean;
the other, taking its course westward, fell from mountain to mountain,
flowed along the side of the block of extinguished volcanos, which is
now Ardâche, and was finally lost in the Mediterranean. The first of
those inundations is the Rhine, and the second the Rhone.
From historical records we find that the first people who took
possession of the banks of the Rhine were the half-savage Celts, who
were afterwards named Gauls by the Romans. When Rome was in its glory,
Cæsar crossed the Rhine, and shortly afterwards the whole of the river
was under the jurisdiction of his empire. When the Twenty-second Legion
returned from the siege of Jerusalem, Titus sent it to the banks of the
Rhine, where it continued the work of _Martius Agrippa_. The conquerors
required a town to join Melibocus to Taunus; and Moguntiacum, begun by
Martius, was founded by the Legion, built by Trajan, and embellished
by Adrian. Singular coincidence! and which we must note in passing.
This Twenty-second Legion brought with it Crescentius, who was first
that carried the Word of God into the Rhingau, and founded the new
religion. God ordained that these ignorant men, who had pulled down
the last stone of His temple upon the Jordan, should lay the first
of another upon the banks of the Rhine. After Trajan and Adrian came
Julian, who erected a fortress upon the confluence of the Rhine and the
Moselle; then Valentinian, who built a number of castles. Thus in a few
centuries, Roman colonies, like an immense chain, linked the whole of
the Rhine.
At length the time arrived when Rome was to assume another aspect. The
incursions of the Northern hordes were eventually too frequent and too
powerful for Rome; so, about the Sixth Century, the banks of the Rhine
were strewed with Roman ruins, as at present with feudal ones.
Charlemagne cleared away the rubbish, built fortresses, and opposed the
German hordes; but notwithstanding his desire to do more, Rome died,
and the physiognomy of the Rhine was changed.
Already, as I before mentioned, an unperceived germ was sprouting in
the Rhingau. Religion, that divine eagle, began to spread its wings,
and deposited among the rocks an egg that contained the germ of a
world. St. Apollinaire, following the example of Crescentius, who, in
the year 70 preached the Word of God at Taunus, visited Rigomagum. St.
Martin, Bishop of Tours, catechized Confluentia; St. Materne, before
visiting Tongres, resided at Cologne. At Trèves, Christians began
to suffer the death of martyrdom, and their ashes were swept away
by the wind; but these were not lost, for they became seeds, which
were germinating in the fields during the passage of the barbarians,
although nothing at that time was seen of them.
After an historical period the Rhine became linked with the marvellous.
Where the noise of man is hushed, Nature lends a tongue to the nest of
birds, causes the caves to whisper, and the thousand voices of solitude
to murmur; where historical facts cease, imagination gives life to
shadows and realities to dreams. Fables took root, grew, and blossomed
in the voids of History, like weeds and brambles in the crevices of a
ruined palace.
Civilization, like the sun, has its nights and its days, its plenitudes
and its eclipses; now it disappears, but soon returns.
As soon as civilization again dawned upon Taunus, there were upon the
borders of the Rhine a whole host of legends and fabulous stories.
Populations of mysterious beings, who inhabited the now dismantled
castles, had held communion with the _belles filles_ and _beaux
chevaliers_ of the place. Spirits of the rocks; black hunters, crossing
the thickets upon stags with six horns; the maid of the black fen; the
six maidens of the red marshes; Wodan, the god with ten hands; the
twelve black men; the raven that croaked its song; the devil who placed
his stone at Teufelstein and his ladder Teufelsleiter, and who had the
effrontery to preach publicly at Gernsbach, near the Black Forest, but,
happily, the Word of God was heard at the other side of the stream; the
demon, Urian, who crossed the Rhine at Dusseldorf, having upon his back
the banks that he had taken from the sea-shore, with which he intended
to destroy Aix-la-Chapelle, but being fatigued with his burden, and
deceived by an old woman, he stupidly dropped his load at the imperial
city, where that bank is at present pointed out, and bears the name of
Loosberg. At that epoch, which for us was plunged into a penumbra, when
magic lights were sparkling here and there, when the rocks, the woods,
the valleys, were tenanted by apparitions; mysterious encounters,
infernal castles, melodious songs sung by invisible songstresses; the
frightful bursts of laughter emanating from mysterious beings,--these,
with a host of other adventures, shrouded in impossibility, and holding
on by the heel of reality, are detailed in the legends.
At last these phantoms disappear as dawn bursts in upon them.
Civilization again resumed its sway, and fiction gave place to fact.
The Rhine assumed another aspect: abbeys and convents increased;
churches were built along the banks of the river. The ecclesiastic
princes multiplied the edifices in the Rhingau, as the prefects of Rome
had done before them.
The Sixteenth Century approached; in the Fourteenth the Rhine
witnessed the invention of artillery; and on its bank, at Strasbourg,
a printing-office was first established. In 1400 the famous cannon,
fourteen feet in length, was cast at Cologne; and in 1472 Vindelin
de Spire printed his Bible. A new world was making its appearance;
and, strange to say, it was upon the banks of the Rhine that those two
mysterious tools with which God unceasingly works out the civilization
of man,--the catapult and the book--war and thought,--took a new form.
The Rhine, in the destinies of Europe, has a sort of providential
signification. It is the great moat which divides the north from the
south. The Rhine for thirty ages, has seen the forms and reflected the
shadows of almost all the warriors who tilled the old continent with
that share which they call sword. Cæsar crossed the Rhine in going
to the south; Attila crossed it when descending to the north. It was
here that Clovis gained the battle of Tolbiac; and that Charlemagne
and Napoleon figured. Frederick Barbarossa, Rudolph of Hapsbourg, and
Frederick the First, were great, victorious, and formidable when here.
For the thinker, who is conversant with History, two great eagles are
perpetually hovering over the Rhine--that of the Roman legions, and
that of the French regiments. The Rhine--that noble flood, which the
Romans named _Rhenus superbus_, bore at one time upon its surface
bridges of boats, over which the armies of Italy, Spain, and France
poured into Germany, and which, at a later date, were made use of by
the hordes of barbarians when rushing into the ancient Roman world:
at another, on its surface it floated peaceably the fir-trees of
Murg and St. Gall, the porphyry and the marble of Bale, the salt of
Karlshall, the leather of Stromberg, the quicksilver of Lansberg, the
wine of Johannisberg, the slates of Coab, the cloth and earthenware of
Wallendar, the silks and linens of Cologne. It majestically performs
its double function of flood of war and flood of peace, having,
without interruption, upon the ranges of hills which embank the most
notable portion of its course, oak-trees on the one side and vine-trees
on the other--signifying strength and joy.
For Homer the Rhine existed not; for Virgil it was only a frozen
stream--_Frigiora Rheni_; for Shakespeare it was the “beautiful Rhine”;
for us it is, and will be to the day when it shall become the grand
question of Europe, a picturesque river, the resort of the unemployed
of Ems, of Baden, and of Spa.
THE SEINE
A. BOWMAN BLAKE
Few persons outside of France have any acquaintance with, or knowledge
of, the rare beauties of Seine scenery. The river has thus far escaped
the vulgarity of becoming a common tourist’s high-road. The general
impression is current that the Seine, being destitute of the legendary
romance of the vine-clad Rhine, the vivid and somewhat spectacular
scenic effects of the Italian lakes, or even the lawn-like finish of
the Thames, offers no attractions to either amateur or tourist. This
opinion only proves the falsity of opinion based upon superficial
knowledge. From the artistic point of view, perhaps, no other one
river in Europe possesses a character of scenery so preëminently
beautiful, or so replete with the charm of contrast, or rich in
variety; for the picturesque portions of the noble river are by no
means confined to the grandeur and wildness of the Fontainebleau
forests, or of the animated quays and crumbling Mediæval houses of the
ancient city of Rouen. To one in search of scenes which shall unite
the charms of beautiful river scenery with the added note of pastoral
and village rusticity, almost every turning of the river will reveal
a mine of wealth. It is a characteristic of the scenery of the Seine
that it is eminently sketchable at almost every point. For it is
more than a purely picturesque, it is an essentially poetic river. A
conclusive proof of its superiority in point of artistic resources and
suggestivement is, perhaps, that no other European river scenery
has had so overwhelming an influence upon modern Art. During the past
forty years, in which the Seine and its tributaries have been the
principal camping-ground of the best French landscape-painters, the
peculiarities of its scenery, and the features of its rustic life, have
formed the taste, and developed a wholly original mode of treatment of
_genre_ and landscape in the modern French school. The two principal
characteristics of the scenery of the Seine are its naturalness, and
its possessing in the highest degree that individuality which marks its
landscapes as distinctively French. The Seine could never be mistaken
at any point for other than a French river. The Parisian masters, in
transferring to their canvasses the peculiarities of the river and
shore aspects, have produced a school of landscape as essentially
national in character as that which marks the Dutch and Flemish
masterpieces of two hundred years ago. The low wide meadows, the
stately poplars, the reedy shores, and the delicate atmosphere which
veils the jumble of roofs, and the quaint towers and turrets that are
lanced from the Seine shores, have already become as familiar features
of modern French landscape, as the cone-shaped hills of Flanders and
the flat windmill-dotted fields of Holland, which makes the character
of the landscape in Dutch and Flemish canvasses.
[Illustration: THE SEINE]
I have spoken of the naturalness of the Seine landscape. It is this
which makes its lasting charm. Along these banks Nature neither rises
to the sublime nor does she appear in too wild or dishevelled a state.
There is a happy blending of the cultivated and the uncultivated,
of course tamed and yet enjoying the wilder _abandon_ of freedom.
Nowhere are the scenes too grand or too wide for the pencil; the hills
suggest, but do not attain, the majestic; the wide, flat fields and
the long stretches of meadows are broken into possible distances by a
gently sloping ground, or an avenue of tall poplars. The villages and
farm-houses dotted along its banks wear a thoroughly rustic air; the
villas and _châteaux_ crowning its low hills become naturally a part
of the landscape by their happy adaptation, architecturally, to the
character of their surroundings; while the not infrequent ruins of
monastery or ancient castle group charmingly with the fluffy foliage
and dense shrubbery.
Perhaps the impressionist’s most ideal landscape would be found among
the villages of the upper Seine, that part of the Seine which flows
between Fontainebleau and Rouen, as beyond Rouen the river takes on a
stronger and bolder character both in its breadth and in the quality of
its scenery.
First in point of beauty among the villages contiguous to
Fontainebleau, is Grètz, a little village not directly upon the
Seine, but upon its tributary, the Loing. Grètz can be reached in an
hour’s drive from the town or palace of Fontainebleau. This charming
village must have grown here, close to the low sweet level of the
winding river’s banks, with a view to its being sketched. Not a
feature necessary to the making of a picture is wanting. The village
street lies back some distance from the shore, the backs of the houses
fronting on the river, the village and river life made one by the
straggling rose, fruit, and vegetable gardens running down between
their high stone-wall enclosures to the very edges of the swiftly
flowing streams. As one views the village from the mid-stream, one has
the outlined irregularity of the village houses limned against the sky.
To the right, between the tall grenadier-like poplars, or the higher
branches of the willow, rises a beautiful group of old buildings; the
blue spaces of the sky are seen through the arches and ruins of the old
_château_ of La Reine Blanche, that queen having made, centuries ago,
Grètz her dwelling place. The massive, simple lines of the castle’s
Norman tower contrast finely with the belfry of the still more ancient
church close beside it, the dark façades of these old buildings being
relieved by the gay touches of colour upon the adjacent houses. A
queer old bridge appears to leap directly from the very courtyard of
the _château_ to the opposite shore, and on the bridge is constantly
moving some picture of rustic life, peasants with loads of grapes or
fagots, a herd of oxen laboriously dragging the teeming hay-cart, a
group of chattering villagers, or the shepherd leading his flock to
richer pastures. The river banks themselves are not wanting in the
beauty of human activity. In the gardens, as our boat drifted along the
banks, were half-a-dozen bent old women weeding, sowing, and plucking.
Farther down, beyond the bridge, is the washerwomen’s stand, the bare
arms, short skirts, and gay kerchiefs of these sturdy peasant women,
with the bits of colour their home-spun linens yield, making delightful
contrasts with the delicate arabesques which light foliage made against
the sky.
The upper valley of the Seine, that portion of the river lying between
Paris and Rouen, seems at a first glance to be a country as sterile in
artistic resources as it is interesting to the average tourist. But the
French artist, so far from finding the flat, wide stretches of field
and meadow, the scanty foliage, and the scattered group of farm-houses
which border the river banks, either too prosaic or too trite for
his pencil, has discovered from a close study of this apparently
common-place valley scenery a new feature of landscape beauty. This
feature has been the present original treatment of the flat surfaces
of ground and of large sunlit spaces. The character of all this valley
scenery may be summed up in a few words; tilled fields running down to
the water’s edge; wild uncultivated fields and rank dank meadows, their
flatness broken here and there by a clustering group of low shrubbery,
by rows of the slim, straight French poplars, or an avenue of stunted,
bulbous-trunk willows, with their straight, reed-like branches. The
entire landscape has but two lines, the horizontality of the meadows
and the perpendicular uprising of the trees, except that far off
in the distance run the waving outlines of the hills of Normandy.
Such is the aspect of the country in which some of the first among
contemporaneous French artists have found new sources of inspiration.
Those wide, sunlit meadows, breathing the rich luxuriance of nature
in undisturbed serenity; the golden spaces of the air shimmering like
some netted tissue between tree and tree; the shadows cast by a single
tree across the length of the field; an intimate knowledge and study of
this landscape have taught the French brush the secret of its power in
painting a flat picture, and in wresting from sunlight the glory of its
gold. The peculiar qualities of the atmosphere at certain seasons of
the year make the Seine valley entrancing, especially to Art Students.
In the spring, nothing can exceed the delicacy, purity and fineness of
the colouring of the foliage, and the tones of light are marvellous in
their dainty refinement and suggestiveness. Nature seems to be making
a sketch in outline of a picture, which summer is to fill in, so pure
are the outlines of foliage and landscape in that wonderful medium of
delicately coloured ether. In summer, sunlight fairly drenches the
fields. Autumn colours, also, here seem richer, firmer, more glowing
than in other parts of France, and the October twilights in their
brilliance and duration approach an American tint.
The first breaks in the monotony of the valley scenery are the
approaches to, and the immediate suburbs about, Rouen. The river banks
just below are particularly picturesque. The river between Rouen and
La Bouille assumes a character different from that which marks it
above a city. It was my special good fortune to traverse this portion
sometime before sunrise. We left the city behind us masked in grey
mist, only the iron _flèche_ of the cathedral piercing the cottony
wrappings. On the motionless Seine not a ripple was astir, and the
morning fog held leaves and trees in a close, breathless embrace. But
at Croisset, with the shooting of the sun above the horizon came the
melting hues and freshening breath of morning. As the clouds, slowly
rolled apart, gave us glimpses of the magnificent panorama of Rouen set
in its circlet of hills, the effect was that of the gradual lifting
of a drop-curtain upon some fine scenic landscape. The river itself
was a jewel of colour, reflecting the faintly tinted shipping along
the wharves, the rich emerald of the trees, and the shadowy grasses
along the shore. The steamer on its way steers in and out among a
hundred little islands which give a magical effect of enchantment, so
fairy-like and exquisite are their shapes and forms. With Croisset,
Hautot, Loquence, and Sahurs, the majesty of the Rouen quays, wharves,
spires, and cathedral towers gives place to the richer, softer beauty
of rural village loveliness. But the most beautiful picture greeted our
eyes as we approached La Bouille, which is picturesquely set against
the greenery of a hilly back-ground, its bright, light-coloured houses
so close to the water’s edge that the river was like a broken rainbow
of colour, reflecting their tints in its ripples. Across the river was
a magnificent expanse of meadow and tilled field, with a poplar now
and then to serve as a sentinel guarding the bursting grain. The banks
of the river are delightfully diversified by clusters of old thatched
farm-houses, spreading fishing-nets, and old boats moored in tiny
creeks. As we passed the last of the village houses, there were some
wonderful effects of light and colour; all the confused indecision of
light scurrying clouds piled above the meadows; the uncertain vagueness
of a mist rolling still, like the skirts of a fleecy robe, over the
distant river bends; and immediately above us the warmth, brilliance,
and goldenness of sunrise in its early splendour. Couched amidst the
mysterious shade of some dense foliage was the bending form of an old
woman, filling her pitcher at the river-side, scarlet kerchiefed and
dun skirted. Off in the grey distance was the figure of a peasant woman
carrying her child upon her back, her tall, straight form magnified
into strange attitude by the misty atmosphere. A brush capable of
strong handling, and an eye trained to seize the more fleeting beauties
of nature, would have found in this La Bouille picture a poem of colour
and tenderness.
I have already mentioned the naturalness of the rustic life of the
Seine fields and farm-houses. The sturdy simplicity of the Normandy
peasant is his well-known characteristic. The farmers at the plough,
the fishermen mending their nets, the shepherd tending his flocks,
are not the least poetic of the elements which make the charm of
this river scenery. There reigns here an Arcadian calm, a certain
patriarchal simplicity. The complicated ingenuities and labour-saving
machines of modern invention have not as yet become the fashion among
the Normandy peasant-farmers, and thus every agricultural implement,
seen out-of-doors, seems available for an artist’s purpose. The ploughs
are marvels of ancient construction; oxen and horses are harnessed
in ways known only to those who have learned the science as a secret
handed down from sire to son; and carts, threshing-machines, rakes, and
hoes have an air of venerability that matches well with the old gabled
houses and worn rustic dress of the farmers. It is this aspect of age
which imparts such beautiful low tones of colour to the pictures of
human life along these shores. There are no flaring, flashing hues,
no brilliant dashes of colour; instead, the tones of landscape, sky,
atmosphere, and the human life blend in a beautiful harmony of soft low
tints. In matters of toilet, the Normandy peasant’s taste is perfect.
The farmers wear blouses of dark, sober blues; the women short skirts
of dull green, brown or home-spun grey; their aprons are snuff-colour
or lilac, and their close-fitting embroidered cap, or the coloured
kerchief tied over their heads, brings into admirable relief their
brilliant complexions, strong prominent features, and flaxen tresses.
In that morning’s journey from Rouen to Havre we enjoyed a delightful
variety of out-door life. In the early sunrise hours there were visible
the first symptoms of the farm-house in early rising. The farmer was
seen striding over the dew-wet meadows to open barns or to drive forth
the cattle; women were busy milking, and the children trudging to the
river with pails and pitchers to be filled. Later, the fields were
alive with the ploughmen’s cries, and men and women were starting
out, rakes and scythes in hand, for their day’s work; children stood
up to their chins in the yellow grain, in the midst of the scarlet
_coquelicots_ and the star-eyed daisies. Towards noon there was a
pretty picture of a farmer wheeling along the river bank a huge load of
green grass, atop of which were seated two round, moon-faced children
whose laps and hands were full of the brilliant field-flowers. Behind
them walked the mother with a rake slung over her shoulder, her short
skirts and scant draperies permitting a noble freedom of step and
movement, her head poised as only the head of a woman used to the
balancing of heavy burdens is ever held. Hers was altogether a striking
figure, and the brush of Vollen or of Breton would have seized upon
her to embody the type of one of his rustic beauties, whose mingled
fierceness and grace make their peasants the rude goddesses of the
plough.
One of the chief charms of the Seine scenery is the variety and
contrast its shores present. One passes directly from the calm and the
rural naturalness of sloping meadows fringed with osiers, willows,
and poplars, to the walled quays of Caudebec, with its spires, broad
avenues, and garden-enclosed houses. Caudebec is characterized by
an imposing _château_ crowning its hillside, by beautiful gardens,
terraces, its long row of “striped” houses stretching along its quays,
and the beauty of its cathedral spire rising above the tree-trops.
Perhaps Villequier may be said to be the culminating point of beauty
upon the Seine. Here the river seems only like a large lake, a fact
which invests the landscape with its noble uprising hills and the
beautiful, thickly wooded spurs of the hillocks, with something of
the rounded finished aspect which belongs to lake scenery. The lovely
village of Villequier itself peeps in and out of its encompassing
trees as if with a conscious air of coquetry. The bright, gaily
coloured houses grouped upon the water’s edge give a touch of Italian
brilliancy to the scene, while its fine _château_ of Villequier and
the old Gothic spire of the village church add the noble lines to the
_ensemble_.
This bay of Villequier is the beginning of the bolder beauty of the
Seine scenery. Its quieter aspects lie above Villequier. The artist
in search of striking scenes and a rich variety of contrasts will
find this part of the river afford fine material. On the way to
Quillebœuf and Tancarville the shores of the river assume a hundred
different aspects. There is the forest of Bretonne, the lovely valley
of the Bolbec, the beautiful _château_ of Etalan, and the ruins of
the Twelfth Century church. Quillebœuf itself stands boldly out into
the river, perched upon a spur of rising ground, and is, perhaps,
the most pretentious town upon the Seine. After Quillebœuf and
Tancarville the loftier hills and thickly wooded shores of the river
give place to wide, flat marshes and open valleys. The marshes just
beyond Quillebœuf are, to our taste, its most distinguishing beauty;
they run directly out to the most distant points of the horizon, and
the rich yellow-green grass, with its brilliant bouquets of wild
flowers scattered profusely over the flat treeless surface, makes
a kaleidoscope of colour under the broad unbroken splendour of the
noon-day sun. Cattle in large herds, horses, and sheep, pasture upon
the rich meadows, so that the animal-painter finds here a superb
landscape for the setting of his ruminating cows, fleecy sheep, or wild
unbridled colts.
Just beyond these meadows the Seine loses all the character of a river.
It has assumed, before its final plunge into the ocean, the turbulent,
tumultuous aspect of a small sea, and like a lover wearing his lady’s
colours, the river turns to the deeper greys and colder blues of the
sea’s dark tint. The boat stops long enough at the wonderful old
seaport town of Honfleur for one to catch a glimpse of its quaint
turreted houses, its crooked narrow streets, its wharves with their
picturesque assemblage of lateen-shaped sails. Then Havre is reached,
and with those swarming quays and bright pebbly shores the Seine is
lost in the great Atlantic.
THE GANGES
SIR WILLIAM W. HUNTER
Of all great rivers on the surface of the globe, none can compare in
sanctity with the Ganges, or Mother Gangá, as she is affectionately
called by devout Hindus. From her source in the Himálayas, to her
mouth in the Bay of Bengal, her banks are holy ground. Each point of
junction of a tributary with the main stream has its own special claims
to sanctity. But the tongue of land at Allahábád, where the Ganges
unites with her great sister river the Jumna, is the true _Prayág_,
the place of pilgrimage whither hundreds of thousands of devout Hindus
repair to wash away their sins in her sanctifying waters. Many of
the other holy rivers of India borrow their sanctity from a supposed
underground connection with the Ganges. This fond fable recalls the
primitive time when the Aryan race was moving southward with fresh and
tender recollections of the Gangetic plains. It is told not only of
first-class rivers of Central and Southern India, like the Narbadá, but
also of many minor streams of local sanctity.
An ancient legend relates how Gangá, the fair daughter of King Himálaya
(Himávat) and of his queen, the air-nymph Menaka, was persuaded, after
long supplication, to shed her purifying influence upon the sinful
earth. The icicle-studded cavern from which she issues is the tangled
hair of the god Siva. Loving legends hallow each part of her course;
and from the names of her tributaries and of the towns along her
banks, a whole mythology might be built up. The southern offshoots of
the Aryan race not only sanctified their southern rivers by a fabled
connection with the holy stream of the north. They also hoped that in
the distant future, their rivers would attain an equal sanctity by the
diversion of the Ganges waters through underground channels. Thus,
the Bráhmans along the Narbadá maintain that in this iron age of the
world (indeed, in the year 1894 A. D.) the sacred character of the
Ganges will depart from her now polluted stream, and take refuge by an
underground passage in their own Narbadá river.
The estuary of the Ganges is not less sacred than her source. Ságar
Island at her mouth is annually visited by a vast concourse of
pilgrims, in commemoration of her act of saving grace; when, in order
to cleanse the 60,000 damned ones of the house of Ságar, she divided
herself into a hundred channels, thus making sure of reaching their
remains with her purifying waters, and so forming the delta of Bengal.
The six years’ pilgrimage from her source to her mouth and back again,
known as _pradak-shina_, is still performed by many; and a few devotees
may yet be seen wearily accomplishing the meritorious penance of
“measuring their length” along certain parts of the route. To bathe in
the Ganges at the stated festivals washes away guilt, and those who
have thus purified themselves carry back bottles of her water to their
kindred in far-off provinces. To die and be cremated on the river bank,
and to have their ashes borne seaward by her stream, is the last wish
of millions of Hindus. Even to ejaculate “Gangá, Gangá, at the distance
of one hundred leagues from the river,” said her more enthusiastic
devotees, might atone for the sins committed during three previous
lives.
[Illustration: THE GANGES]
The Ganges has earned the reverence of the people by centuries of
unfailing work done for them. She and her tributaries are the unwearied
water-carriers for the densely-peopled provinces of Northern India, and
the peasantry reverence the bountiful stream which fertilizes their
fields and distributes their produce. None of the other rivers of India
comes near to the Ganges in works of beneficence. The Brahmaputra and
the Indus have longer streams, as measured by the geographer, but
their upper courses lie beyond the great mountain wall in the unknown
recesses of the Himálayas.
Not one of the rivers of Southern India is navigable in the proper
sense. But in the north, the Ganges begins to distribute fertility
by irrigation as soon as she reaches the plains, within 200 miles of
her source, and at the same time her channel becomes in some sort
navigable. Thenceforward she rolls majestically down to the sea in a
beautiful stream, which never becomes a merely destructive torrent in
the rains, and never dwindles away in the hottest summer. Tapped by
canals, she distributes millions of cubic feet of water every hour in
irrigation; but her diminished volume is promptly recruited by great
tributaries, and the wide area of her catchment basin renders her
stream inexhaustible in the service of man. Embankments are in but few
places required to restrain her inundations, for the alluvial silt
which she spills over her banks affords in most parts a top-dressing
of inexhaustible fertility. If one crop be drowned by flood, the
peasant comforts himself with the thought that the next crop from his
silt-manured fields will abundantly requite him.
The Ganges has also played a preëminent part in the commercial
development of Northern India. Until the opening of the railway
system, from 1855 to 1870, her magnificent stream formed almost the
sole channel of traffic between upper India and the seaboard. The
products not only of the river plains, but even the cotton of the
Central Provinces, were formerly brought by this route to Calcutta.
Notwithstanding the revolution caused by the railways, the heavier and
more bulky staples are still conveyed by the river, and the Ganges may
yet rank as one of the greatest waterways in the world.
The value of the upward and downward trade of the interior with
Calcutta, by the Gangetic channels, may be taken at about 400,000,000
of rupees per annum, of which over 153,000,000 go by country-boats,
and nearly 240,000,000 by steamers (1891). This is exclusive of the
sea-borne commerce. But the adjustments which have to be made are so
numerous that the calculation is an intricate one. As far back as 1876,
the number of cargo boats registered at Bámangháta, on one of the
canals east of Calcutta, was 178,627; at Hugli, a river-side station on
a single one of the many Gangetic mouths, 124,357; and at Patna, 550
miles from the mouth of the river, the number of cargo boats entered
in the register was 61,571. The port of Calcutta is itself one of the
world’s greatest emporia for sea and river-borne commerce. Its total
exports and imports landward and seaward amounted in 1881 to about
1,400,000,000 of rupees (Rx. 140,000,000) and to 1,523,000,000 of
rupees (Rx. 152,363,583) in 1891.
Articles of European commerce, such as wheat, indigo, cotton, opium,
and saltpetre, prefer the railway; so also do the imports of Manchester
piece goods. But if we take into account the vast development in the
export trade of oil-seeds, rice, etc., still carried by the river, and
the growing interchange of food-grains between interior districts of
the country, it seems probable that the actual amount of traffic on the
Ganges has increased rather than diminished since the opening of the
railways. At well-chosen points along her course, the iron lines touch
the banks, and these river-side stations form centres for collecting
and distributing the produce of the surrounding country. The Ganges,
therefore, is not merely a rival, but a feeder of the railway. Her
ancient cities, such as Allahábád, Benares, and Patna, have thus been
able to preserve their former importance; while fishing villages like
Sahibganj and Goalanda have been raised into thriving river marts.
For, unlike the Indus and the Brahmaputra, the Ganges is a river of
great historic cities. Calcutta, Patna, and Benares are built on
her banks; Agra and Delhi on those of her tributary, the Jumna; and
Allahábád on the tongue of land where the two sister streams unite.
Many millions of human beings live by commerce along her margin.
Calcutta, with its suburbs on both sides of the river, contains a
population of nearly a million. It has a municipal revenue of four
and one-fourth millions of rupees; a sea-borne and coasting commerce
in 1891 of 770,000,000 of rupees, with a landward trade of over
750,000,000. These figures vary from year to year, but show a steady
increase. Calcutta lies on the Hugli, the most westerly of the mouths
by which the Ganges enters the sea. To the eastward stretches the
delta, till it is hemmed in on the other side by the Meghná, the
most easterly of the mouths of the Ganges. More accurately speaking,
the Meghná is the vast estuary by which the combined waters of the
Brahmaputra and Gangetic river-systems find their way into the Bay of
Bengal.
MORNING ON THE GANGES
PIERRE LOTI
Nearly all the streets lead to the Ganges, where they grow wider and
become less gloomy. Here, suddenly, the magnificent palaces and all the
brightness of the day dawn upon us.
These massive tiers of steps, which stretch along the banks and reach
to the water’s edge even in these times of drought, where fallen
temples emerge from their slimy bed, were made in honour of the Ganges,
and on each landing there are little granite altars, shaped like
niches, in which diminutive gods are placed. These images are like
those of the temples, but they are of more massive construction, so as
to withstand the swirl of the waters which cover them during the annual
rains.
The sun has just risen from the plain through which old Ganges wanders,
a plain of mud and vegetation still overshadowed by the mists of night;
and waiting there for the first red rays of dawn lie the granite
temples of Benares, the rosy pyramids, the golden shafts, and all the
sacred city, extended in terraces, as if to catch the first light and
deck itself in the glory of the morning.
This is the hour which, since the Brahmin faith began, has been sacred
to prayer and to religious ecstasy, and it is now that Benares pours
forth all its people, all its flowers, all its garlands, all its birds,
and all its living things on to the banks of the Ganges. Awakened by
the kiss of the sun, all that have received souls from Brahma rush
joyously down the granite steps. The men, whose faces beam with calm
serenity, are garbed in Kashmir shawls, some pink, some yellow, and
some in the colours of the dawn. The women, veiled with muslins in the
antique style, form white groups along the road, and the reflection
from their copper ewers and drinking vessels shimmer amongst the
silvery glints of their many bracelets, necklets, and the rings which
they wear round their ankles. Nobly beautiful both of face and gait,
they walk like goddesses, while the metal rings on their arms and feet
murmur musically.
And to the river, already encumbered with garlands, each one comes to
offer a new wreath. Some have twisted ropes of jasmine flowers which
look like white necklets, others garlands of Indian pinks whose flowers
of golden yellow and pale sulphur gleam in contrast, resembling the
changing colours of an Indian veil.
And the birds that had been sleeping all along friezes of the houses
and the palaces awake too and fill the air with chirpings and with song
in the mad joy of dawn.
In all the temples the gods have their morning serenades, and the angry
roar of the tom-toms, the wail of the bag-pipes, and the howling of the
sacred trumpets, are heard from every side.
Naked children holding each other by the hand come in gay throngs;
yoghis and slowly-moving fakirs descend the steps; the sacred cattle
advance with deliberate steps, while people stand respectfully aside
offering them fresh wreaths of reeds and flowers. They, too, seem to
look on the splendours of the sun, and in their harmless fashion appear
to understand and pray.
Next come the sheep and goats; then dogs and monkeys hurry down the
steps.
All the granite temples scattered on the steps that serve as niches and
altars, some for Vishnu, some for the many-armed Ganesa, protrude into
the sunlight their squat little gods--gods which are grey with mud, for
they have slept many months under the troubled waters of the river to
which the ashes of the dead are consigned.
Now that the rays of the sun are fierce the people shelter under large
umbrellas whose shade awaits them. For these huge parasols, which
resemble gigantic mushrooms clustering under the walls of the city, are
always left open.
The many rafts and the lower steps are thronged with Brahmins, who,
after setting down their flowers and ewers, hasten to disrobe. Pink and
white muslins and cashmeres of all colours lie mingled on the ground,
or are hung over bamboo canes, and now the matchless nude forms appear,
some of pale bronze, others of a deeper shade.
The men, slim and of athletic build, plunge to their waists into the
sacred waters. The women, still wearing a veil of muslin round their
shoulders and waists, merely plunge their many-ringed arms and ankles
into the Ganges; then they kneel at the extremest edge and let fall
their long unknotted coils of hair into the water. Then, raising
their heads once more, they allow the water dripping from their
drenched hair to fall upon their necks and bosoms. And now with their
tightly-clinging draperies they look like some statue of a “winged
Victory,” more beautiful and more voluptuous than if they had been nude.