RIVERS. 279 



the thought of a humble and modest commencement issuing in a long and victorious 

 career of the tiny rill, proceeding, by gradual advances, to become an ample stream, 

 fertilising by its exudations, and rolling on to meet the tides of the ocean, bearing the 

 merchandise of cities upon its bosom. The Duddon, one of the most picturesque of the 

 English rivers, oozes up through a bed of moss near the top of Wrynose Fell, a desolate 

 solitude, yet remarkable for its huge masses of protruding crag, and the varied and vivid 

 colours of the mosses watered by the stream. Petrarch's letters and verses have given 

 celebrity to the source of the Sorgues the spring of Vaucleuse, which bursts in an 

 imposing manner out of a cavern, and forms at once a copious torrent. The Scamander 

 is one of the most remarkable rivers for the grandeur of its source a yawning chasm in 

 Mount Gargarus, shaded with enormous plane-trees, and surrounded with high cliffs, 

 from which the river impetuously dashes in all the greatness of the divine origin assigned 

 to it by ancient fable. To discover the source of the Nile, hid from the knowledge of 

 all antiquity, was the object of Bruce's adventurous journey ; and we can readily enter 

 into his emotions, as he stood by the two fountains, after all the toils and hazard he had 

 braved. " It is easier to guess," he remarks, " than to describe the situation of my mind 

 at that moment standing in that spot which had baffled the genius, industry, and 

 inquiry of both ancients and moderns, for the course of three thousand years. Kings 

 had attempted this discovery at the head of armies ; and each expedition was distin 

 guished from the last, only by the difference of the numbers which had perished, and 

 agreed alone in the disappointment which had uniformly, and without exception, followed 

 them all. Fame, riches, and honour, had been held out for a series of ages to every 

 individual of those myriads these princes commanded, without having produced one man 

 capable of gratifying the curiosity of his sovereign, or wiping off this stain upon the 

 enterprise and abilities of mankind, or adding this desideratum for the encouragement of 

 geography . Though a mere private Briton, I triumphed here, in my own mind, over 

 kings and their armies ; and every comparison was leading nearer and nearer to presump 

 tion, when the place itself where I stood the object of my vain-glory suggested what 

 depressed my short-lived triumphs. I was but a few minutes arrived at the sources 

 of the Nile, through numberless dangers and sufferings, the least of which would have 

 overwhelmed me, but for the continual goodness and protection of Providence ; I was, 

 however, but then half through my journey ; and all those dangers, which I had already 

 passed, awaited me again on my return. I found a despondency gaining ground fast upon 

 me, and blasting the crown of laurels I had too rashly woven for myself." Bruce, how 

 ever, laboured under an error, in supposing the stream he had followed to be the main 

 branch of the Nile. He had traced to its spi-ings the smaller of the two great rivers 

 which contribute to form this celebrated stream. The larger arm issues from a more 

 remote part of Africa, and has not yet been ascended to its source. 



Upon examining the map of a country, we see many of its rivers travelling in oppo 

 site directions, and emptying their waters into different seas, although their sources fre 

 quently lie in the immediate neighbourhood of each other. The springs of the Missouri 

 which proceed south-east to the Gulf of Mexico, and those of the Columbia which flow 

 north-west to the Pacific Ocean, are only a mile apart, while those of some of the tributaries 

 of the Amazon flowing north, and of the La Plata flowing south, are closely contiguous. 

 There is a part of Volhynia, of no considerable extent, which sends off its waters, nortli 

 and south, to the Black and Baltic seas ; while, from the field on which the battle of Naseby 

 was fought, the Avon, Trent, and Nen receive affluents, which reach the ocean at opposite 

 coasts of the island, through the Humber, the "Wash, and the Bristol Channel. The field 

 in question is an elevated piece of table-land in the centre of England. The district referred 

 to, where rivers proceeding to the Baltic and the Euxine take their rise, is a plateau about 



