ged,
and all the lines of the water altered in their nature. The quiet
stream is a succession of leaps and pools; the leaps are light and
springy, and parabolic, and make a great deal of splashing when they
tumble into the pool; then we have a space of quiet curdling water,
and another similar leap below.

But the stream when it has gained an impetus takes the shape of its
bed, never stops, is equally deep and equally swift everywhere, goes
down into every hollow, not with a leap, but with a swing, not
foaming, nor splashing, but in the bending line of a strong sea-wave,
and comes up again on the other side, over rock and ridge, with the
ease of a bounding leopard; if it meet a rock three or four feet above
the level of its bed, it will neither part nor foam, nor express any
concern about the matter, but clear it in a smooth dome of water,
without apparent exertion, coming down again as smoothly on the other
side; the whole surface of the surge being drawn into parallel lines
by its extreme velocity, but foamless, except in places where the form
of the bed opposes itself at some direct angle to such a line of fall,
and causes a breaker; so that the whole river has the appearance of a
deep and raging sea, with this only difference that the torrent-waves
always break backward, and sea-waves forward....

Few people, comparatively, have ever seen the effect on the sea of a
powerful gale continued without intermission for three or four days
and nights, and to those who have not I believe it must be
unimaginable, not from the mere force or size of surge, but from the
complete annihilation of the limit between sea and air. The water from
its prolonged agitation is beaten not into mere creaming foam but
into masses of accumulated yeast which hang in ropes and wreaths from
wave to wave, and where one curls over to break, form a festoon like a
drapery from its edge; these are taken up by the wind, not in
dissipating dust, but bodily, in writhing, hanging, coiling masses,
which make the air white and thick as with snow, only the flakes are a
foot or two long each; the surges themselves are full of foam in their
very bodies, underneath, making them white all through, as the water
is under a great cataract; and their masses, being thus half water and
half air, are torn to pieces by the wind whenever they rise, and
carried away in roaring smoke, which chokes and strangles like actual
water. Add to this, that when the air has been e