ACTION OF RIVERS. 
189 
Such a river is said to have attained its “regimen,” 
and this is the goal to which all rivers are striving 
to arrive. 
The course of a river may be divided into three 
stages, which may be, and often are, repeated several 
times, viz. : — 
1. Deepening and widening (the torrent). 
2. Widening and levelling (the river proper). 
3. Filling up (the delta). 
and every part of a river in the second stage has 
passed through the first, every one in the third 
through the other two. 
In the Valais the Upper glacier is a valley in the 
second stage, the ice-fall in the first; the plain from 
the foot of the fall to the Hotel in the second, from 
the Hotel to near Oberwald in the first; from Ober- 
wald nearly to Niederwald in the second, from 
Niederwald to rather beyond Viesch in the first; 
then on to Brieg in the second, and from St. Maurice 
to Villeneuve in the third. 
First Stage. 
In the first phase the river has a surplus of force. 
It may be called a torrent. It cuts deeper and 
deeper into its valley, and carries away the mud 
and stones to a lower level. The sides are steep, as 
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