Yon stream, whose sources run, Turned by a pebble's edge, Is Athabasca, rolling towards the sun, Through the cleft mountain ledge. The slender rill had strayed, But for the slanting stone, To evening's ocean, with the tangled braid Of foam-flecked Oregon. --Holmes. ] Back of all the work of the rivers from year to year and age to age, there seems always the thought of beauty as well as the thought of use. They are evidently under an eternal law of service, of beauty, and of change. "The hills are shadows, and they flow From form to form and nothing stands. They melt like mists the solid lands; Like clouds they shape themselves and go." HIDE AND SEEK IN THE LIBRARY Isn't Tennyson's "Brook" a beautiful title picture of a baby river and its ways? Speaking of human nature in rivers and apparent differences in disposition, why is it that some of the rivers of California run right through the mountain ranges from east to west--have evidently cut their way--while others run along, meekly enough, between the ranges? I'm sure from what we have learned about rivers that you can tell how this happened as well as if you had been there when the rivers were made; but if you can't think--after trying real hard--you will find the answer in the Hide and Seek at the end of the next chapter. Beside being so prominent in the literature of the Bible and so famous in history, the River Jordan is a most curious and interesting stream, and every child should know about it. Here are some of the things you will find: Why it is born partly grown, and doesn't begin as a little stream, like the Mississippi; why it may be said to be in both the tropical and temperate zones[13]; about its two valleys, both of which it uses at the same time.[14] [Footnote 13: Britannica.] [Footnote 14: International.] Another famous river over in that part of the world--it's the biggest river in Western Asia, in fact--was born twins. See if you can find such a river on the map. (The name of it is at the end of the next chapter.) In the days of Alexander the Great these twin rivers, which now unite in one after travelling along independently for a while, were a good day's journey apart clear to the end. In the article on this river in the Britannica, and in books of travel you will find how, by a quaint and ingenious device, the river is made to pump itself up hill and irrigate the fields; how history, clear back to the beginning of civilization, is written in the ruins of cities along its banks; how it used to put in part of its time bounding the Roman empire, and how nowadays it is forced to help support Arab river pirates and wild pigs.