The rivers are the great channels through which the ceaseless interchange of the elements goes on; they unite the heart of the continents and the solitary places of the mountains with the universal sea which washes all shores and beats its melancholy refrain at either pole. Into their currents the hills and uplands pour their streams; to them the little rivulets come laughing and singing down from their sources in the forest depths. A drop falling from a passing shower into the lake of Delolo may be carried eastward, through the Zambesi, to the Indian Ocean, or westward, along the transcontinental course of the Congo, to the Atlantic. The mists that rise from great streams, separated by vast stretches of territory, commingle in the upper air, and are carried by vagrant winds to the wheat-fields of the far Northwest or the rice-fields of the South. The ocean ceaselessly makes the circuit of the globe, and summons its tributaries along all shores to itself. But it gives even more lavishly than it receives; day and night there rise over its vast expanse those invisible clouds of moisture which diffuse themselves through the atmosphere, and descend at last upon the earth to pour, sooner or later, into the rivers, and be returned whence they came. This subtle commerce, universal throughout the whole domain of nature, animate and inanimate, tells us a common truth with the rose, and corrects the false report of the senses that all things are fixed and isolated. It discloses a communion of matter with matter, a fellowship of continent with continent, an interchange of forces which throws a broad light on things still deeper and more marvellous. It affirms the unity of all created things and predicts the dawn of a new thought of the kinship of races; there is in it the prophecy of new insights into the universal life of men, of fellowships that shall rise to the recognition of new duties, and of a well-being which shall bind the weakest to the strongest, the poorest to the richest, the lowest to the highest, by the golden bond of a diviner love. Chapter XIII At the Spring