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