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RIVER. 
To RIVE, v. n. [ rife/a, Su. Goth.] To be split; to be 
divided by violence.—His hearte asonder riveth. Chaucer. 
—Oh that our hearts could but rive in sunder at but the 
dangers of those public judgments. Bp. Hall. 
RIVE, a town of Italy, in Piedmont, province of Vercelli. 
Population 800. 
RIVE DE GIER, a town of France, department of the 
Loire, on the Gier. It has manufactures of iron, steel, and 
glass; and in the neighbourhood are extensive coal-pits, the 
produce of which is, for the most part, sent to Lyons by the 
canal of Givors. Population 4300 ; 12 miles north-east of 
St. Etienne, and 23 south-south-west of Lyons. 
To RI'VEL, v. a. [gejnpleb, Saxon, corrugated, rumpled; 
ruyffelen, Teut.] To contract into wrinkles and corruga¬ 
tions. 
Then droop’d the fading flowers, their beauty fled 
And clos’d their sickly eyes and hung the head, 
And rivell'd up with heat, lay dying in their bed. Dryden. 
RI'VEL, or Ri'vfxing, s. [from the verb; ruyffel, Teut.] 
Wrinkle. Hulocl, and Sherwood. —It hadde no wem, ne 
ryveling, or ony such thing. Wiclijfe. 
RIVEL, a mountain of Wales, in Caernarvonshire, 1866 
feet in height. 
RIVEL DE LASSEMALS, a town of France, department 
oftheAude, with 1000 inhabitants; 9 miles west-north¬ 
west of Quillan. 
RIVELLO, a town of Italy, in the south-west of the king¬ 
dom of Naples, province of Basilicata, containing, with the 
adjacent village of Bosco, a population of 5400; 10 miles 
east.by-south of Policastro. 
RIWEN, part, of rive. 
RIVENHALL, a parish of England, in Essex; 2 miles 
north-by-east of Witham. Population 536. 
RI'VER, s. \rivus, Lat.] A land current of water bigger 
than a brook.—Springs make rivulets; and these united form 
brooks; which coming forward in streams, compose great 
rivers, that run into the sea. Locke. —It is a most beautiful 
country, being stored throughout with many goodly rivers, 
replenished with all sorts of fish. Spenser. 
A river is one of the fairest as well as most useful of nature’s 
works. Pliny has (too fancifully perhaps) but with so much 
beauty described the striking analogy that exists between 
human life and the course of a river, that we cannot resist 
transcribing his poetical portrait, before we launch into the 
dryer speculations connected with the subject. 
“ The river,” says he, ‘ s springs from the earth; but its ori¬ 
gin is in heaven. Its beginnings are insignificant, and its in¬ 
fancy is frivolous; it plays among the flowers of a meadow; 
it waters a garden, or turns a little mill. Gathering strength 
in its youth, it becomes wild and impetuous. Impatient of 
the restraints which it still meets with in the hollows among 
the mountains, it is restless and fretful; quick in its turnings, 
and unsteady in its course. Now it is a roaring cataract, 
tearing up and overturning whatever opposes its progress, 
and it shoots headlong down from a rock ; then it becomes 
a sullen and gloomy pool, buried in the bottom of a 
glen. Recovering breath by repose, it again dashes along, 
till tired of the uproar and mischief, it quits all that it has 
swept along, and leaves the opening of the valley strewed 
with the rejected waste. Now, quitting its retirement, it 
comes abroad into the world, journeying with more prudence 
and discretion, through cultivated fields, yielding to circum¬ 
stances, and winding round what would trouble it to over¬ 
whelm or remove. It passes through the populous cities 
and all the busy haunts of man, tendering its services on 
every side, and becomes the support and ornament of the 
country. Now increased by numerous alliances, and ad¬ 
vanced in its course of existence, it becomes grave and stately 
in its motions, loves peace and quiet; and in majestic silence 
rolls on its mighty waters, till it is laid to rest in the vast 
abyss.” 
The courses of rivers give us the best general method for 
judging of the elevation of a country. Thus it appears that 
Savoy and Switzerland are the highest grounds of Europe, 
Vol. XXII. No. 1488. 
from whence the ground slopes in every direction. From 
the Alps proceed the Danube and the Rhine, whose course 
mark the two great valleys, into which many lateral streams 
descend. The Po also and the Rhone come from the same 
head, and with a steeper and shorter course find their 
way to the sea through valleys of less breadth and length. 
On the west side of the valleys of the Rhine and the Rhone 
the ground rises pretty fast, so that few tributary streams 
come into them from that side; and from this gentle eleva¬ 
tion France slopes to the westward. If a line, nearly straight, 
but bending a little to the northward, be drawn from the 
head of Savoy and Switzerland all the way to Solikamskoy 
in Siberia, it will nearly pass through the most elevated 
part of Europe; for in this tract most of the rivers have 
their rise, On the left go off the various feeders of the 
Elbe, the Oder, the Wesel, the Niemen, the Dura, the 
Neva, the Dwina, the Petzora. On the right, after passing 
the feeders of the Danube, we see the sources of the Sereth 
and Pruth, the Dniester, the Bog, the Dnieper, the Don, and 
the mighty Volga. The elevation of the latter, however, 
is extremely moderate: and it appears from the levels taken 
with the barometer by the Abbe Chappe d’Auteroche, that 
the head of the Volga is not more than 470 feet above the sur¬ 
face of the ocean. And we may observe here, by the bye, 
that its mouth, where it discharges its waters into the Cas¬ 
pian sea, is undoubtedly lower by many feet, than the sur¬ 
face of the ocean. Spain and Finland, with Lapland, Nor¬ 
way, and Sweden, form two detached parts, which have little 
symmetry with the rest of Europe. 
A chain of mountains begins in Nova Zembla, and 
stretches due south to near the Caspian sea, dividing Europe 
from Asia. About three or four degrees north of the Cas¬ 
pian sea it bends to the south-east, traverses western Tartary, 
and passing between the Tengis and Zaizan lakes, it then 
branches to the east and south. The eastern branch runs to 
the shores of Korea and Kamtschatka. The southern branch 
traverses Turkestan and Thibet, separating them from India, 
and at the head of the kingdom of Ava joins an arm 
stretching from the great eastern branch, and here forms 
the centre of a very singular radiation. Chains of moun¬ 
tains issue from it in every direction. Three or four of 
them keep very close together, dividing the continent into 
narrow slips, which have each a great river flowingjin the mid¬ 
dle, and reaching to the extreme points of Malacca, Cambodia, 
and Cochin-China. From the same central point proceeds 
another great ridge due east, and passes a little north of Can¬ 
ton in China. We called this a singular centre; for though 
it sends off so many branches, it is by no means the most 
elevated part of the continent. In the triangle which is in¬ 
cluded between the first southern ridge (which comes from 
between the lakes Tanges and Zaizan), the great eastern 
ridge, and its branch which almost unites with the southern 
ridge, lies the Boutan, and part of Thibet, and the many 
little rivers which occupy its surface flow southward and 
eastward, uniting a little to the north of the centre often men¬ 
tioned, and then pass through a gorge eastward into China. 
And it is farther to be observed, that these great ridges do 
not appear to be seated on the highest parts of the country; 
for the rivers which correspond to them are at no great dis¬ 
tance from them, and receive their chief supplies from the 
other sides. This is remarkably the case with the great Oby, 
which runs almost parallel to the ridge from the lakes to 
Nova Zembla. It receives its supplies from the east, and in¬ 
deed it has its source far east. The highest grounds (if we 
except the ridges of mountains which are boundaries) of the 
continent seem to be in the country of the Calmucs, about 
95° east from London, and latitude 43° or 45° north. It is 
represented as a fine though sandy country, having many 
little rivers which lose themselves in the sand, or end in little 
salt lakes. This elevation stretches north-east to a great dis¬ 
tance; and in this tract we find the heads of the Irtish, 
Selenga, and Tunguskaia (the great feeders of the Oby), the 
Olenitz, the Lena, the Yana, and some other rivers, which 
all go off to the north. On the other side we have the 
great river Amur, and many smaller rivers, whose names 
21 are 
