ALL over the world, innumerable rivers drop from their hills to the sea. The slightest of watersheds may ordain a long journey for the rill that might otherwise follow a neighborhood cousin to a nearer gulf. How many cooling drops are lost voyaging! How many flung from mossbearded lip of mill wheel, or drawn again to the lustrous and bountiful sky, itself feeder and nourisher of lands, bosom, and open heart!

Up country, the stream is a definite comrade. You may count upon its overflow when the violet is waking; upon the August dwindling of volume and voice, and the autumnal crescence as line storm and October gale bring down the overcharged springs fresh-foot upon the valley. Therefore, an’ you love willows kneedeep in watery mirrors, go not to the meadows in July, for thousand wings and stings will attack from rank, rustling reeds, bereft of coolness, far from the shrunken channel.

The mountain waterfall, too early visited on a season of drought, will tempt only to curving lip and lifted shoulder. But mark it after the first chill has framed it in a frosty gold, and the storms have cast their wild maidens over its height. Nearer the rushing turmoil you draw, and sink by the green pool where the russet leaf spins on.

There is an hour when Montmorenci, wasted to a miserable thread, signs only impotence there as it straggles from fossil hieroglyphs to the St. Lawrence. At another, it spreads its broad buckler of white over the scarred cliff, and descends in unstained nobility, — like the curtain that falls, far fairer than the play.

On the amphitheatred Ligurian coast, when ripe chestnut woods illuminate the valley in autumn, and the rigid cypress punctuates your exclamations of delight as you climb from farm to ruined campanile, the Boato, under its double Roman bridge, may flood high in a half day from the showers that, in tropical intensity, drench the ruddy mountains, the clustered villages. On the morrow, chatting over now unsubmerged pebbles, like the brown women wringing out pink jackets at its verge, it will have fallen to the type of the wanderer that hunts for the ocean. But yesterday, it was so assured! The tideless sea pushes here no adventurous foot to meet the mountaineer.

It waits in pulsating azure, thrilling under Scirocco’s Sicilian hand, until one drop more from the uplands shall be added to its hoard. The river gains no vigor from the sea. It is more generous, and flings its little bounty to an uncaring heart, beating unresponsive.

Yet, far in the north, where winter storms gather for days, and fall on a coast of fangs and famine, there, in the dark land of low-bending skies and black bread, the tide astounds the inland waters, and drives them back before its eygre. They are baffled and resistant. But the steady roll of wave that has plunged about St. Michel’s Mountain, and has marched miles between the river banks like a whitecoat army, drives foam and current before it, and, at St. Samson’s Locks, dashes high toward the dyke path, as if fain to climb the cliff into Brittany. I know not how the tides gather from Fundy under Blomidon, but I have seen the race on the flat floor bordering the Channel when the waters are coming, and l’arrivée heads their speed with high-flung head, making for the canal, and the long, golden river beaches. And the pinnacled abbey, with its empty refectory and resounding cloisters, where only the curious now clatter, rears its old magic above the deluge. As the tide quivers to its height and stays to draw breath, line by line, buttress and spire, rose window and slim arch, are traced for a moment on this delicate flood, soon fleeting in a simulant shyness over the sands, and withdrawing its relaxed invasion from the river as a snake slips from its skin.

Below Caudebec, also, the waters run high, sweeping the Seine like old Danish pirates, as if they would storm the towers of Rouen, and break into shreds the lace that man and time have needled out of stone.

And tide-rivers I know where the squat black fishing-boats come lunging home with tide and wind, — as the mud hollows are filled, and waves from blunt bows dash on the flats below giant teasles and coarse grasses. Women are on the sand-blown shore by the great crucifix, kneeling no more, for the boats have come to port, and their heavy sails of brown and red blot the low, rusty gleam that tears a ragged edge along dissolving storm. At ebbtide here the sands are barred and beautiful with pigmy channels and runnels wherein unwary fish are darting, by which the fisher children play. The sea is far withdrawn, and, at this midsummer. only a counterfeit river descends from parched inland meadows where ranks of wistful poplars crowd for freshness to the sluggish verge, and the red mills are slackened beneath the great walls and beaconing elms of high-perched Montreuil.

Most Dutch waterways are blind. They may not seek that dominant ocean, submissive, knocking at wintry times, however, none too daintily at the dune door, guarded by the lights of Westcapelle or the Helder.

But the Yssel flows along between its cow-dotted meads, here a brickyard reflected, there a clump of dark thatch, a plump maid with yoked green and Vermillion pails by the ferry, a stunted mill in the marsh like a cross-legged heron. Kampen Tower, blue beside the Zuyder Zee, lures the water on, and the peat boats fly with its own speed, and slide over the slack ferry line at Kamperveer.

And the Maas is a river of power and glory. Whether it rush in June haze by the rose-roofed villages and their delicately etched dark avenues by the dykes, slipping past walled Woudrichem and its carved brick tower, or glide in autumn by the back waters of fated Merwede Meer where submerged lie mediæval burgs, and the golden reeds are sibilant above their stilled marketplaces, or dash in revel of west winds by Dort Kerk and corbied gables, it is always noble. There is Rhine water in it. A sort of spiced wine of those terraced vineyards below century-shaken turrets. It is all history, faery, legend, suggestion. Even the Drak — fabled ravager — is not far distant. By the black mills of s’Gravendeel swim the long, low barges with freight from upper Rhine, swinging broad on the curves as their spitting head scours the mud and silt while it swashes along. The stork is leveled above it, cleaving the wind. Red shine the fisher-boats for miles, dancing down by the glancing mills on a reel they will run all the way to stately Rotterdam.

There is a rise and fall, even here at Dort of the Kerk and corbies, and when a bleak wind blows up the tide for hours and days, Mynheer may return by boat from the club to his besieged front door. Guard the dykes, patrol them well. For now is the North Sea knocking, and his growl is dread and terrible where the scared pinkies drop their lee-boards in the gale.

In lower Zeeland the Scheldt enfolds fertile Walcheren in its arms, and shoulders Flanders with a partial air. There must be little river water there. But the burly tides pull over green shallows where the red buoys ride, and seabirds dive above the veer of current.

At the little harbor where the Arnemuiden boats warp slowly in on a land breeze by lone tower and antique bulwark, not far from home, the Stadhuis belfry seems to ring up the tides. It sends out hourly messengers like flocks of birds. They scurry over the sandy reaches, the flats of Schouwen. “Piet Hein” calls the waters, and they flood between quay and mimic dry dock. The latticed windows are all eyes when the boats come home, as well. Rooks and doves are abroad in clannish convolutions. The tide rushes on, up into the Spui, and the old moat holds it below the dyke where the white-headed miller leans at sunset until sluice is opened and warning flag tells boats to hold away until the miniature torrent has rocked the peaceful harborage and dashed out to freedom beyond that clamor of “Piet Hein.”

Our own seaboard is richly diversified. From the fastnesses of our Blue, White, and Green hills come leaping the cascades and streams that, swelling, carry life to the plain, and silt from a dozen counties to the sea. The ocean ravages a dune-bordered frontier; it eats the clay, disturbs a coast line. But the river, passing resistless by field and foothill, grasps relentlessly at shelving bank or yielding loam, and fights the sea with its own arms. Delta is an octopus; sand bar, a submarine danger; channel, shifting and vagarious, little to be counted on by comfortable captain. The invulnerable coast, capitulating perforce at one point, reinforces, rebuilds, and fortifies without rest at another.

The Master River is one that drew its first faint breath in a clime alien and unallied to that of its engulfment. It draws all inland freshnesses to its flood; predacious, ravenous, it sucks even subcutaneous life from the land. Blind springs run over the hidden strata, shelving toward the monster of ancient voracity. It has coursed the prairie for centuries. When man was but a being blind and soulless, when beasts of unfamiliar silhouette loomed by its tide, when saurians dared it, and all that is now fossil thrived therein, then, even, the River was a river, and ground its way to the Sea.

Forced from those pictured heights where now the traveler gazes with a heart of wonder, impulsion was instinct. It accrued but to lavish. It sawed deep into the cañon bed, left forgotten the barren tableland, sank into the land itself, learned by rote the easiest path. Were there a curve too broad ? it was cloven away. A rock too stubborn? the steam power of a single waterfall reduced pride, burrowed into the combative heart.

The peak of snow godmothered its rude cradle. Harsh were the gifts bestowed, the vows required. It was to vanquish and to acquire, to deflower and to endow. It might appear enemy. Saviour was the name wherewith the black pine crossed its white, small brow, there at the first insignificant leap. Lonely was the mountain child, volition barely awakening. Could it have beheld the precipitate path, the burning prairie, the choking bayou, or the gulf, brandishing its white banners as the River, child at heart no longer, drew to its end after the freehold of a continent, sinking, by many channels, to a single death! But a sister, as fragile, peeping by the next bowlder, linked fortune with fate, and, merged in a commonalty of strength, they essayed the unknown together. Yet the children of such stern mountain birth are grown vigorous and powerful! Sliding under congealing surface, they shoulder it away. They fresco the declivity with flowers. They draw great cities to rest beside their waters. The path of their eternal wanderings is pranked for the traveling bird with oases and underwoods of lavish green, with blossoming and fruiting, with grain and harvesting. The River responds to the sky above its long route. It must become Fury or Beneficence, as the semaphore of the heavens shall bid. But, by some communicable thrill, the force of the crag is transmitted, permanent and unfailing. The height, still nourisher of the prairie, wreathes its carven head in clouds of magnificent vapor. In the recesses of a continent are housed the sources. The land, like man himself, owns a stream of the soul. Its bestowal is imperative. The gift is unasked, at times unsuspected. Its use is of moment. As the earth feels for its waterways, entreats them, implores them, to knead her rigidity, render her plastic and pliable with their filaments of dew, leave her waving and beautiful in the air, guard, enfold, and succor her, so does that man who hears at first the subterranean knocking of his inmost current. And the glad soul has its way with him, and builds her singing groves about his heart.

We have followed the rivers to headwaters! But, along our coast, you may not always choose the veritable river among all our marsh inlets and busy fingers where the rough masseur of the sea rebuilds the land, life and strength leaping under his virile handling. Yet, this side the bar, by the island where rosy grasses are blowing in the wind, your canoe may divine its home waters, nosing up the marshland for miles until it come to shelter under the village hill, where vociferous clammers have already moored their bright dories. Thence, at night, you see the scattered torches of the herringboats, creeping out on flood tide, teasing will-o’-the-wisps around that slow moon and her dimpling double.

And, as the dark ultramarine of the splendid autumn night dyes the wallows and island farms to the special purple which, every ripening season, October dusk claims anew, the tide lifts foam and weed around the bridge, stemming the fresh water at its piers as the two clench and wrestle and toss their little cold arms in the night. But languorously the moon beckons from over the broad, and the grip slackens. No more an invader, the salt tide dives for the open, and the river now pursues, all evening freshness from coves above the milldam where cool reeds glimmer.

Only a few miles farther are the old shipyards, and here another stream slips by church and village gables and salt stacks to the bay. Sea-going schooners are still built on the shelving beach, — schooners of cleaner, finer line than the old Marbleheaders, — and sometimes a blunt tug is under way on the shores.

The air is sweet with the odor of newly shaven wood; pine and forest scents, tarry whiffs, smoke, the pungency of oakum, suggestive oils and essences, — all are here. The beaks of these seabirds in making crane landward over little pools and puddles left by late rains, eager already for a taste of the tide-water astern. They swell within their bars of ochre scaffolding. All this geometrical bracing and buttressing disturbs them. They need only the breasting wave to steady and elate them. Yet, to the eye that seeks untiringly for beauty, their curves are the fairer for these rigidities that once blocked out their beautiful proportions as a sculptor graves upon his block the fundamental guiding lines denoting all that spirit and leaping contour lying unborn within. Pleasant sounds are on the air. Mallet and hammer are beating, now coupled, now broken in measure, as a horse’s hoofs click and lose the rhythm when you hearken in the night. The adze tears and splinters. Chisel cleaves the forest-heart. On the scaffolding, forms against the clouds, abstract in silhouette as on a Puvis frieze, drive home the tree-nails, refine the curve, true the line, fit the ship for her journeying. Now and then an old voyager is hauled piteously to a vacant berth by a fussy tug, altogether careless of injured feelings. She takes her place among the beach débris of rusty iron, scraps, tackle, chips and shavings, oak and applewood, weathered beams, logs new and planed, or bent by heat, waiting masts, abandoned tools, and seasoned loafers, and is patched for another voyage to the Bay or one more winter on the Banks. Heartening, as her timbers clutch her firmly again, she details St. Elmo flashes of sea-lore to the unlaunched hulls at her side, and feeds their ignorance with gossip that sets them gasping through their anchor holes.

Even after the last laborer has swung down from his perch, leaving tools aloft in secure confidence of the friendly neighborhood, the newcomer is excellent company. The boats, in their various degrees of completion, loom against marsh and river channels. The quawk flies over, his one raucous note a signal from the rude seas beyond the inlet. Hawk from remote eyry may plane and forage in the meadows, heron rise from the sedge, doves flutter whitely to the cote by antique gambrel. As the chill twilight gathers, this clustered colony takes on a furtive air of expectation. So the Viking’s Long Serpent or Dragon, building on old sheltered reaches by indistinguishable groves, might have dreamed of seas to cross, strange shores to discover, lands of gold where the boats might beach with the long surf roar behind and a line of sullen foemen facing them! They are on fire with the first thrill of imagination that comes before the risen baptismal waters have drenched their parched sheathings in brine from the bay. Buoyed and eased, they are then free at last of the ocean roads, here, in this quaint backwater by the farms.

Follow north, — as the crow flies, — and you find a river of veritable breadth and power, a boundary, a channel. It is impelled from the hills; tributaries trend toward it from sparkling lakes. Speeding over falls and dams to the harbor, neither choked there by dune nor hindered by marsh, it meets the sea with a direct pride, and by lighthouse and fortress blows the splendid breath of its power and strength. The tides play upon it, and ruffle that prismatic surface with their aquatic games. Up and down the roads, where squadrons may lie at ease, about the heavy lumbermen (whose colors ape their Istrian kin, tied up by that far-off Zattere), under the sharp bows of the modem colliers awaiting their berths in the town, leap the dolphin-like currents, that have never a doubt of the river’s readiness for sport.

Here is neither delta nor dallying. In this capacious shelter the northeaster may not trouble the huddled coasters. They have not far to run from open to the lee. On summer afternoons, when old grasses by the slopes are growing golden in the sun, and landlocked towns lie burnt in August heats, Seabreeze and breath of swift river fall upon the harbor points and rocky eminences like little showers of icy air. One whiff is scented of sweet fern or tannin, the next of saline. The light feathers of southeast blow across the river-mouth, and bring an elastic caracole of bugle, as guard changes, and the dark squads march away.

At night, when riding lights are studding the bay, and all is well in the roads of heaven, where Vega and the Cross dominate the fleet that crowds the Milky Way, the bugle calls and calls beneath the stars. And when you stir again from dreams, it is the debonair réveille from over the morning tide that leads you to half-somnolent memories of a French garrison town and its gay buglers.

This river has lost no whit of curiosity at the end of its run. It pries about the shore, peering up narrow inlets, lapping the reeds below ancestral doorways where red lilies gleam against the dusty clapboards, and a tide of chicory spreads a thin film of azure over headstroDg grass. It pushes up creeks that indent moor and farmland, sea at heel. Like an old Battersea, timbered bridges link the promontories, one starting by an old tollhouse ruin, once in use like its flourishing brethren farther upstream. You come familiarly on spruce and fir, juniper and berry pasture, between the native houses, built to catch the harbor wind, and blossoming with gay roadside gardens. Many an inquisitive lane runs off the main road (itself no result of surveyor’s toil), hunting for, and bordering, the water, shaded by enormous elms and chestnuts.

Here are the stately houses of a past generation. Here, beneath these bosquets that might grace a French park, lounged the gallants of old as their ladies plied tambour frame, clad in the delicate muslins those great Indiamen in the roads were wont to bring. Fine balustrade and grisaille wall, clustered windows, pedimented door, — still may you find. Passes a tottering survivor; still are tales told of early and late occupants.

Here is a noble tomb, there a communal burying-ground, blown full of sea savors, red with roses. And the scattered farms hold their dead close at hand in narrow yards whence the children of God cannot stray far away.

Well downstream, by the gurry-strewn shore of decaying dory and burdockburied capstan, may lie a black wreck, gnawed by the tides. In the cove, an ancient lumber schooner is tied up for good and all. Spiders man her bleached decks, and the tide sluices through her hold, making delightful gurgles as you look down the open green hatchway. An old stay of the port light creaks in the gust, and the rotten cordage aloft strays in loops and raveled tassels.

Poor old Luella! linked to a fir tree, of no kin to her masts that have known the strain of tempest, neighbor to lobsterpot and punt of fisher children! There lies her shell in a lonely corner, where yet she may face offing, watching the fivemasters wing out to sea, feeling the disintegrating tides and grinding ice when the winter sea jams the creek floe against her, done with voyaging.

Darting tugs scream in the harbor; some stranger calls for a pilot; a visitor requires a proper salute. When the white fogs flood in from the Banks, bringing uncertainty and mystery, there is a “ skerry of shrieks ” all up and down the channel, and a banging of pans and beating of bells from anchorage, like nothing so much as a Breton peasant enticing her vagrant swam of bees.

But the Luella is dumb beside her dark trees. She is now secure from the casualties of the deep. The tide-river knocks against her old heart in its rougher flow, and brutally hints of lost horizon and looming seaboard.

She only groans a little as her scarred hulk lifts from the pebbles, and leans back on shore cables, quite content to harbor in the tide-river, and all its bustling life, for her last anchorage, questing over, dreams begun.