Introduction Concerning rivers (Walton, Izaak) A flood (Audubon, John James) My visit to Niagara (Hawthorne, Nathaniel) The lake of salt (Darwin, Charles) The Tocantins and Cameta (Bates, Henry Walter) Ganges, the great purifier (Twain, Mark) The source of the Albertine Nile (Stanley, Henry Morton) Speckled trout (Burroughs, John) Lake Ontario (Brooke, Rupert) The Thames (Dreiser, Theodore) The St. Lawrence (Beston, Henry) Falling water (Peattie, Donald Culross) The Fraser (Hutchinson, Bruce) The big blackooft (Maclean, Norman) Awash in the Baleh (O'Hanlon, Redmond) The river (Haig-Brown, Roderick) The Hawkesbury (Grenville, Kate) We start up the Great Missouri (Heat-Moon, William Least) Rivertops (Williams, Ted) The tree and the trout (Van Tighem, Kevin) Adoration for a hose (Duncan, David James) Bank deposits (Herriot, Trevor) Superior (Frayne, Jill) Farewell to the nineteenth century (McPhee, John) Acknowledgments