749 



WATERSHED. 



WATERSPOUT. 



750 



the German Wassei-scheide, and was probably first introduced among us 

 by miners from Germany. The term is, however, objectionable ; because, 

 to the mere English scholar, it appears to be a native compound of the 

 words ' water ' and ' shed,' as if meaning that the water is shed in oppo- 

 site directions, and hence leads to the belief that the side of the basin 

 of a river, rather than the division between the adjoining basins of two 

 rivers, is intended. In fact, the expression has of late years been 

 frequently used in that sense. The substitution of the term ' water- 

 parting ' renders the idea intended to be conveyed intelligible to all, 

 and exactly expresses the Latin divortio aquarum, and the German 

 Wastertcheide." (' Sources of the Nile,' p. 3, note.) 



Dr. Beke's remarks are amply justified, it will be seen, by the 

 previous discussion of Mr. Nicolay, and also in the following statement 

 on the philosophy of the subject as one of the configuration of the 

 globe, by Sir J. F. W. Herschel, who, it will be observed, while 

 adopting by previous implication the term watershed, in its primary 

 signification, evidently connects it also with the meaning of the English 

 word to shed. " Possessed of a knowledge of the heights of stations 

 above the sea, we may connect all stations at the same altitude by 

 level lines, the lowest of which will be the outline of the sea-coast ; 

 and the rest will mark out the successive coast-lines which would 

 take place were the sea to rise by regular and equal accessions of 

 level over the whole world, till the highest mountains were sub- 

 merged. The bottoms of valleys and the ridge-lines of hills are 

 determined by their property of intersecting all these level Hues at 

 right angles, and being, subject to that condition, the shortest and 

 longest, that is to say, the steepest and the most gently sloping courses 

 respectively, which can be pursued from the summit to the sea. The 

 former constitute ' the water-courses ' of a country ; the latter its 

 lines of ' watershed,' by which it is divided into distinct basins of 

 drainage." (' Outlines of Astronomy,' par. 289.) 



Again, Captain H. Strachey, and his brother Lieut.-Col. R. Strachey, 

 to whose contributions to scientific geography we have so often 

 referred, designate the northern and southern faces, or slopes of the 

 great table-land of Thibet [PLAINS] as the Turkish, and Himalayan 

 or Indian 'watersheds' respectively; meaning the entire inclination, 

 between the table-land and the low plains to the north and south, 

 occupied by successive ranges of mountains, down and through which 

 the great rivers maintaining a course along the summit of the table- 

 land, and receiving the drainage of its corrugations, flow into those 

 plains, namely, the plains of Hindustan on the one hand, and those of 

 Turkistan or Yarkend on the other. ('Phil. Trans.', 1859, pp. 776, 

 777.) Here we have another modification of the sense in which the 

 term we are discussing is to be understood, referring to a slope, not as 

 giving rise to streams, or separating them, but as merely giving them 

 passage. In the signification of Wassertcheide, the water-parting, the 

 highest part of the table-land itself is the watershed. But Lieut-Col. 

 Strachey defines the meaning in which he uses the term by referring 

 to " the crest of the Indian watershed," which is merely the summit of 

 the slope. 



Finally, an eminent geographer and geologist, Professor H. D. 

 Rogers, in his account of the parallel roads of Lochaber, [ VALI.EYS, 

 col. 544] states that each of them coincides " in level with some water- 

 shed, or notch in the hills leading out from its glen into some other 

 glen ; " implying only by watershed an opening, by which water escapes 

 to a lower level, and merely adopting one of the senses of the word shed. 



We find, therefore, that at present the expression watershed is 

 employed, by the first authorities, to denote any portion of inclined land 

 on which water appears or descends from a higher to a lower level. 



The spirit of Dr. Beke's remarks on the subject is applicable to other 

 scientific terms which have been derived from the German language, 

 and especially to those adopted from the phraseology of miners. Both 

 geography and geology were cultivated as sciences in Germany before 

 they bad become such in England ; and mining hi the former country 

 was already a systematic art with a copious terminology. Some of 

 the principal founders also of modern geology in England had been 

 students in the celebrated school of Freiberg under Werner, which 

 became an additional cause for the introduction of German terms into 

 scientific nomenclature. This, indeed, was inevitable, and might have 

 been unexceptionable, but an erroneous procedure took place, of which 

 we have an example in the term which is the subject of the present 

 article. Barbarous imitations of German terms and phrases were 

 made, instead of expressing their meaning in sound English words, or 

 constructing compound terms derived from the perennial sources of 

 the Greek or Latin languages. This was done even by men who were 

 fully competent to take these preferable alternatives ; thus, the late 

 Rev. Dr. W. D. Conybeare, afterwards Dean of Llandaff, who was an 

 ornament of the University of Oxford, and a geologist of great merit, 

 substituted, about fifty years ago, the term strike, now universally 

 employed by English geologists, for the German word stretch, to denote 

 the direction of stratified rocks, at right angles to their line of dip, as 

 referred to the cardinal points. An unreasonable horror of technicality 

 and abstruseness appears to have prevailed among the gifted men to 

 whom we have alluded, who, in their anxiety to avoid burdening the 

 new sciences tht^ ! iug with unfamiliar expressions, left them 



almost without an appropriate vocabulary, the want of which, especially 

 in geology, has still to be supplied, in many instances, by awkward and 

 ometimes tedious periphrasis. 



It is worth the remark that the propriety of Dr. Beke's substitution 

 seems to be tacitly admitted by other geographers ; for in the index 

 to the ' Manual of Geographical Science,' published with the second 

 volume, the passages above cited from Mr. Nicolay, explaining the 

 applications of " watershed," are referred to by the words, " water- 

 parting, meaning of term," although that term does not occur in them. 

 This may be taken as an indication that it may not be too late to 

 establish " water-parting " for the primary sense in which " water- 

 shed " has been received ; but we think that the latter may be accepted 

 also, confined, however, to the secondary meanings to which, as we 

 have seen, it has been extended, and more particularly to those 

 involving the obvious meaning of the English words of which it 

 consists. 



The importance to the inhabitants of a country of the geographical 

 configuration or phenomenon described by the term water-parting, and 

 the influence which a particular example of it may exert in the produc- 

 tion of national ideas, is curiously illustrated by the Rev. A. P. Stanley's 

 interpretation, adopted and extended by Dr. Beke, of the story told 

 to the historian Herodotus, in Kgypt, by the treasurer of Minerva's 

 Treasury at Sais. This was, that there were two mountains, named 

 Crophi and Mophi, rising into sharp peaks, situated between the city 

 of Syene in Thebais, and Elephantine ; and that the sources of the 

 Nile issued from between those mountains, half of the water flowing 

 over Egypt and to the north, and the other half over Ethiopia and to 

 the south. Herodotus observes that by the deep unfathomable sources 

 described to him in this story were meant the violent eddies of the 

 cataracts ; and Mr. Stanley argues, that to the ancient inhabitants of 

 Lower Egypt, the sight or the report of such a convulsion as the rapids 

 make " in the face of their calm and majestic river must have seemed 

 the very commencement of its existence, the struggling into life of 

 what afterwards becomes so mild and beneficent; and that if they 

 heard of a river Nile further south, it was but natural for them to 

 think it could not be their own river. The granite range of Syeue 

 formed their Alps the water-parting of their world. If a stream 

 existed on the opposite side, they imagined that it flowed in a contrary 

 direction into the ocean of the south." (' Sources of the Nile," p. 43 ; 

 Stanley's ' Sinai and Palestine,' p. xliii.) 



WATERSPOUT, a meteorological phenomenon of the same class 

 probably as the whirlwinds which raise pillars of sand in the deserts of 

 Africa : such whirlwinds, in fact, become waterspouts when they reach 

 the sea ; and when waterspouts reach the shore they in some cases 

 become or produce whirlwinds. But there is much reason to believe 

 that the name has been properly applied to several very different 

 phenomena. 



The following is a general description of the production of a water- 

 spout at sea : 



Below a thick cloud the sea appears to be greatly disturbed within a 

 circular area, whose diameter varies from 100 to 120 yards, the waves 

 tending rapidly towards the centre of the agitated mass, where there is 

 formed a vast body of water or aqueous vapour : from hence there 

 rises, with a spiral movement, towards the cloud, a column of a conical 

 form, resembling a trumpet. Vertically above this ascending column 

 there is formed in the cloud, but in an inverted position, a correspond- 

 ing cone, whose lower extremity (the apex of the cone) gradually 

 approaches the summit of the ascending column ; and at length both 

 are united, the diameter at the place of junction being only two or 

 three feet. The waterspout is said to be accompanied, during its 

 formation, by a rumbling noise ; and, when complete, it assumes a 

 magnificent appearance. The whole column, which extends from the 

 sea to the clouds, is of a light colour near its axis, but dark along the 

 sides, which gives it the appearance of being hollow. 



The spout appears to move with the wind, though even when no 

 wind is felt it sometimes varies its position, tending successively in 

 different directions. It frequently happens that the upper and lower 

 parts of a column move with different velocities, and then, after the 

 whole has taken an inclined position, the parts separate from one 

 another, often with a loud report. Previously to the rupture of tho 

 column, the dark parts seem to be drawn upwards irregularly, leaving 

 only a slender tube in connection with the water below. The whole of 

 the vapour is at length absorbed in the air, or it descends into the sea 

 in a heavy shower of rain. The duration of the phenomenon is various : 

 some spouts disappear almost as soon as they are formed, and others 

 have been known to continue nearly an hour : occasionally they form 

 themselves, continue for a short time, vanish, and again appear, and so 

 on several times successively. 



Waterspouts are occasionally seen above Land (of which some re- 

 markable examples will be described in the sequel), and consequently 

 there is then no ascending column of water or vapour to meet that 

 which descends from the clouds. In Dr. (Sir David) Brewster's 

 ' Journal of Science ' (No. 5) there is an account of one which was seen 

 in France : it is stated to have appeared like a conical mass of vapour, 

 and to have given out a strong sulphureous smell ; flashes of lightning 

 issued from it, and threw off a great quantity of water. It moved 

 forward in one direction over high grounds and valleys, and it crossed 

 the course of a river, but on coming to hills of a conical form, it passed 

 round them. The alleged sulphureous smell was no doubt that of the 

 electric aura, so called, perceived when lightning has taken effect very 

 near the observer, and probably often that of ozone in reality. Water- 



