t
is the springs that hold back their supply and keep the rivers from
running dry in hot weather.

Do they feel now that they know their river? Are they ready to leave it,
and explore some other? Indeed, no. They are barely introduced to it.
All kinds of rivers are shown by the different parts of this one. It is
a river of the mountains and of the lowland. It flows through woods and
prairies, through rocky passes and reedy flats. It races impetuously in
its youth, and plods sedately in later life. The trees and the other
plants that shadow this stream, and live by its bounty, are very
different in the upland and in the lowland. The scenery along this
stream shows endless variety. Up yonder all is wild. Down here great
bridges span the flood, boats of all kinds carry on the commerce between
two neighbour cities. A great park comes down to the river-bank on one
side. Canoes are thick as they can paddle on late summer afternoons.

No one can ever really know a river well enough to feel that it is an
old story. There is always something new it has to tell its friends. So
my two explorers say, and they know far more about their friendly river
than I do.

THE WAYS OF RIVERS

A canal is an artificial river, built to carry boats from one place to
another. Its course is, as nearly as possible, a straight line between
two points. A river, we all agree, is more beautiful than a canal, for
it winds in graceful curves, in and out among the hills, its waters
seeking the lowest level, always.

No artist could lay out curves more beautiful than the river forms.
These curves change from year to year, some slowly, some more rapidly.
It is not hard to understand just why these changes take place.

Some rivers are dangerous for boating at certain points. The current is
strong, and there are eddies and whirlpools that have to be avoided, or
the boat becomes unmanageable. People are drowned each season by
trusting themselves to rivers the dangerous tricks of which they do not
know. Deep holes are washed out of the bed of the stream by whirling
eddies. The pot-holes of which people talk are deep, rounded cavities,
ground out of the rocky stream-bed by the scouring of sand and loose
stones driven by whirling eddies in shallow basins. Every year deepens
each pot-hole until some change in the stream-bed shifts the eddy to
another place.

No stream finds its channel ready-made; it makes its own, and constantly
changes it. The cur