United States or Timor-Leste ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
These new colonists, moreover, came from the Northern provinces, where the Moorish system of culture was little understood; and, incredible as it may seem, though they must have had ocular evidence of the advantages of artificial irrigation, they even neglected to keep in repair the water-channels on their own ground.
The chains of the conscripts clanked in the river villages; the wailing of the women affrighted the pigeons in a thousand dovecotes on the Nile; the dust of despair was heaped upon the heads of the old, who knew that their young would no more return, and that the fields of dourha would go ungathered, the water-channels go unattended, and the onion-fields be bare. War! War! War!
A few small water-channels rise among them, and these, joining others of a similar kind, gather strength and volume sufficient to form the channels of larger watercourses, which eventually fall into some other, dignified by the name of a river, and eventually discharge themselves into the sea.
That part of the continent of North America known as Louisiana, Mississippi, and Arkansas, is in my judgment the key to the whole interior. The valley of the Mississippi is America, and, although railroads have changed the economy of intercommunication, yet the water-channels still mark the lines of fertile land, and afford cheap carriage to the heavy products of it.
Making a move now in the direction of the two apparently separated hills, we passed through some scrub of course, and then came to grassy gum-tree or eucalyptus flats, with water-channels.
The hollows and valleys between the boulder-covered heights were filled with habitations, poor and squalid doubtless, in most instances, but interspersed with the stone-built dwellings of the nobles, merchants, and upper classes of the vast community; except where the elaborately constructed water-channels of the Rayas enabled the land to be irrigated; and in these parts rich gardens and woods, and luxurious crops of rice and sugar-cane, abounded.
I now steered nearly north-east, for about fifteen miles, until we struck the river. The country here consisted of extensive grassy flats, having several lines of gum-timber traversing it, and occasionally forming into small water-channels; the entire width of the river-bed here was between five and six miles.
That part of the continent of North America known as Louisiana, Mississippi, and Arkansas, is in my judgment the key to the whole interior. The valley of the Mississippi is America, and, although railroads have changed the economy of intercommunication, yet the water-channels still mark the lines of fertile land, and afford cheap carriage to the heavy products of it.
The wombat is a great nuisance in districts where there are irrigation canals; its burrows weaken the banks of the water-channels, and cause collapses. The dugong is a sea mammal found on the north coast of Australia. It is said to be responsible for the idea of the mermaid. Rising out of the water, the dugong's figure has some resemblance to that of a woman.
These mounds are natural artesian wells, through which the water, forced up from below, gushes out over the tops to the level ground, where it forms little water-channels at which sheep and cattle can water. Some of these mounds have miniature lakes on their summits, where people might bathe.
Word Of The Day