20 WATER 



SOME INTERESTING THINGS ABOUT RIVERS. 



JENKIN LLOYD JONES. 



DID THE rivers make the valleys or And then along the river the grass grows 



did the valleys make the rivers ? This is greenest, and this afforded good grazing 



not only an interesting but a very difficult for his cows, and his horses, and, may be, 



question to answer correctly. Ask your his camels. What kind of food does the 



teachers about it. Be sure you do not camel like best, anyhow ? Primitive man 



make any mistakes, because when you an- must have learned to swim early, and it 



swer it correctly you have found out a must have been fun for the little boys of 



great deal about geology. And geology barbarism, as it is for the little boys of 



is a hard name for a subject that contains civilization, to plunge into the cooling 



many interesting and easy things, and the water on a hot day. Man must have 



study of the river will help you under- found out very early how to make a raft 



stand many of these things. which would carry him down stream, 



However, it may be about the valleys, and soon after he learned how to make a 



we are very sure that the river made canoe that he could paddle up stream, 



many, many other things that we know So the river became his first road. On it 



about. Did you ever hear of the orator he traveled when he went hunting, and 



in the New York Legislature, who won- with its help he protected his property 



dered how it was that the rivers most al- and that of the tribe. The enemies were 



ways flowed by the big cities? He cer- driven across the river, and kept on the 



tainly got his "cart before the horse," for other side. 



it is the big cities that always grow by the A good way to study what a river does 

 big rivers. History has always grown for man is to find out all you can about 

 along the banks of rivers, because all the life that gathered about some par- 

 civilization has grown along their banks, ticular river, for that will tell you more 

 The boundaries of nations change. The or less of what happened along the banks 

 political maps of Europe that I studied of all the great rivers. The best of all 

 when I was a boy are now out of date, rivers for such study is the Nile. It is 

 and you would find they are all wrong, one of the long rivers of the world, so 

 because the boundaries of kingdoms, long that its sources have only been re 

 states, and empires have changed so cently discovered by those who make 

 often ; but the life of the world continues geographies. Read the stories of Living- 

 to be found largely along the banks of stone and Stanley, and the early explor- 

 the rivers. ers, who went in search of the head 



Why is this ? And here is another waters of the Nile. 



question for you to talk with your teach- But there are two Niles. One runs 



ers about. If you get the answer, you through the continent of Africa, and emp- 



will have the key that will let you into ties into the Mediterranean Sea. An- 



much of the wonders and triumphs of art, other begins in the very earliest dawn of 



architecture, and commerce. history, and runs through the human 



Of course, the very earliest man would story of thought, feeling, and life. Along 



keep close to the river's edge, because he the banks of this Nile, in history, we see 



would have no other sure way of getting how human life was developed ; all 



water to drink, and the fish in the water, human life beginning away back there, so 



the birds on the water, and the birds' far back we cannot count it by years; 



eggs in the nests along the edge of the when man made knives of flints and 



river offered him a sure supply of food, hatchets of stone. And then, because the 



