A River of Ink

Among the wonders of nature in Algeria, there is a remarkable phenomenon of a river of genuine ink.

It is formed by the junction of two streams, one flowing from a region of ferruginous soil, the other draining a peat swamp.

The waters of the first are, of course, strongly impregnated with iron; those of the latter with gallic acid.

On meeting, the acid of one stream combines with the iron of the other, and a true ink is the result. In the older days of a mythology of nature, it would not have required a very vivid fancy to seat a Titan upon the bank, with a tall Egyptian reed for his pen, inditing upon gigantic papyrus the true cosmogony of things visible, and the fancied theogony of things unseen.

Many curious facts and superstitions could be gathered in connection with rivers,--the Nile, so mysteriously sacred to the Egyptians; the Tiber, so dear and so sacred to the Romans; the Rubicon; the Pactolus, a river of Lydia, in which Midas is said to have washed away from himself the power of turning into gold whatever he touched, and from which circumstance it ever after rolled golden sands; the Ganges, still so sacred to the Hindoos, that, in British courts of justice in Hindostan, the water is used for swearing Hindoos, as the Koran is for the Mohammedans, and the Bible for Christians. The city of Benares, on the banks of the Ganges, is the Hindoos the holiest place on earth. Hundreds of thousands of pilgrims go there every year to bathe in the river, and thus, as they think, to wash away their sins. The month of June is devoted to the bath of their idol, Juggernaut.

But, apart from superstition, the Ganges is a wonderful river. Its source is nearly two miles above the level of the sea, in the Himalaya Mountains; the water flowing out of a cave of ice at the bottom of a glacier. Many other rivers flow into it; and it soon becomes a mile wide, and very rapid: its length is fifteen hundred and forty miles. At a distance of five hundred miles from the sea, the channel is thirty feet deep. About two hundred miles from the sea, the delta of the Ganges commences by the separation of the river into parts. Between the different mouths are numerous islands, called Sunderbunds, which are covered with profuse and rank vegetation called jungle, and are haunted by crocodiles and tigers. The air at this section is so unhealthy that no one can live there, yet the water of the Ganges is esteemed for its medicinal virtues.

Then, there is the river Jordan, almost as sacred to Christians as the Ganges is to the Hindoos, on account of the baptism of our Lord (St. Matthew iii. 13-17).

The Jordan is emphatically the river of Palestine, as the Nile is the river of Egypt. It has its phenomena in its annual rise, tortuous course, and rapid descent.

It has been twice fully explored. It rises at the foot of a high cliff near the entrance of a deep cavern; but its direct course is after it leaves the Lake of Tiberias, until it empties into the Dead Sea. This is but a distance of sixty miles; yet so winding is it, that the actual length of the river is two hundred miles.

The Jordan, except near its source, is below the level of the ocean; and the Dead Sea, where it empties, is a quarter of a mile below the surface of the Mediterranean.

The rapid descent of the Jordan has been explained by the explorations of Lieutenants Molyneux and Lynch, who found no less than twenty-seven rapids in its course; and also, that from Lake Tiberias to the Dead Sea, it has a fall of ten hundred and fifty feet.

It rushes over roaring rapids, between high banks covered with tamarisks and willows, so that there are few places of access to its waters.

There were anciently four fords of the Jordan. At one of these, on Monday before Easter, the pilgrims of the Greek Church, often eight thousand in number, who have come down from Jerusalem escorted by the pacha and a guard of Turkish soldiers, perform the well-known ceremony of bathing in the sacred stream. A short distance below this is the point where the river loses itself in the lifeless waters of the Dead Sea.