head-streams

Updated: May 2, 2025

Every year when the rains fall and the mountain snows of Central Africa begin to melt, the head-streams become torrents and the great lakes are filled to the brim. A vast expanse of low, swampy lands, crossed by secondary channels and flooded for many miles, regulates the flow, and by a sponge-like action prevents the excess of one year from causing the deficiency of the next.

Winston Churchill - The River War : An Account of the Reconquest of the Sudan

Armenia, strong in its lofty mountains, its deep gorges, and its numerous rapid rivers the head-streams of the Tigris, Euphrates, Kur, and Aras had for centuries resisted with unconquered spirit the perpetual efforts of the Assyrian kings to bring it under their yoke, and had only at last consented under the latest king but one to a mere nominal allegiance.

George Rawlinson - The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 3: Media : The History, Geography, And Antiquities Of Chaldaea, Assyria, Babylon, Media, Persia, Parthia, And Sassanian or New Persian Empire; With Maps and Illustrations.

These streams do not partake of the diurnal rise and fall, so characteristic of the Swiss rivers and those of the western Himalaya, where a powerful sun melts the glaciers by day, and their head-streams are frozen by night.

J. D. (Joseph Dalton) Hooker - Himalayan Journals — Volume 2

It appears, then, that Shalmaneser, during the first twenty-seven years of his reign, led in person twenty-three expeditions into the territories of his neighbors, attacking in the course of these inroads, besides petty tribes, the following nations and countries: Babylonia, Chaldaea, Media, the Zimri, Armenia, Upper Mesopotamia, the country about the head-streams of the Tigris, the Hittites, the Patena, the Tibareni, the Hamathites, and the Syrians of Damascus.

George Rawlinson - The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2: Assyria : The History, Geography, And Antiquities Of Chaldaea, Assyria, Babylon, Media, Persia, Parthia, And Sassanian or New Persian Empire; With Maps and Illustrations.

The Jerahi rises from several sources in the Kuh Margun, a lofty and precipitous range, forming the continuation of the chain of Zagros. about long. 50° to 51°, and lat. 31° 30'. These head-streams have a general direction from N.E. to S.W. The principal of them is the Kurdistan river, which rises about fifty miles to the north-east of Babahan and flowing south-west to that point, then bends round to the north, and runs north-west nearly to the fort of Mungasht, where it resumes its original direction, and receiving from the north-east the Abi Zard, or "Yellow River" a delightful stream of the coldest and purest water possible becomes known as the Jerahi, and carries a large body of water as far as Fellahiyeh or Dorak.

George Rawlinson - The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 4: Babylon : The History, Geography, And Antiquities Of Chaldaea, Assyria, Babylon, Media, Persia, Parthia, And Sassanian or New Persian Empire; With Maps and Illustrations.