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Watershed   /wˈɔtərʃˌɛd/  /wˈɑtərʃˌɛd/   Listen
Watershed

noun
1.
A ridge of land that separates two adjacent river systems.  Synonyms: divide, water parting.
2.
The entire geographical area drained by a river and its tributaries; an area characterized by all runoff being conveyed to the same outlet.  Synonyms: basin, catchment area, catchment basin, drainage area, drainage basin, river basin.
3.
An event marking a unique or important historical change of course or one on which important developments depend.  Synonyms: landmark, turning point.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Watershed" Quotes from Famous Books



... books of which we have now so hastily spoken, you will be astonished at the freedom with which the original purposes of story-telling have been laid aside and passed by. Where are now the two lovers who descended the main watershed of all the Waverley novels, and all the novels that have tried to follow in their wake? Sometimes they are almost lost sight of before the solemn isolation of a man against the sea and sky, as in LES TRAVAILLEURS; sometimes, as in LES MISERABLES, ...
— Familiar Studies of Men & Books • Robert Louis Stevenson

... Lake and volcanoes and down the Tuolumne Canyon to Hetch Hetchy. Should Hetch Hetchy be submerged for a reservoir, as proposed, not only would it be utterly destroyed, but the sublime canyon way to the heart of the High Sierra would be hopelessly blocked and the great camping ground, as the watershed of a city drinking system, virtually would be closed to the public. So far as I have learned, few of all the thousands who have seen the park and seek rest and peace in it are in favor of this ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir

... unprecedented happenings took place in the Lower Third—happenings such as had never occurred before Honor's advent. Who but she would have thought of tilting two books together and emptying the inkpot on the top of them, when asked to describe a watershed? Yet she looked genuinely astonished when the vials of Miss Farrar's wrath descended upon her, and said almost reproachfully that she was only trying to give ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil

... 26th, and continued to grow rapidly worse. The gauge at Point Bridge shewed twenty-six feet at eight o'clock, four feet above the danger point, and the rivers were rising steadily. Rain was falling throughout the western watershed, and every stream in western Pennsylvania assumed the ...
— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall

... the common rights of some distant cattle farm, and crossed then, not as now, by a decent road, but by a rough confused track-way, the remnant of an old Roman road from Clovelly dikes to Launceston. To the left it trended down towards a lower range of moors, which form the watershed of the heads of Torridge; and thither the two young men peered down over the expanse of bog and furze, which glittered for miles beneath the moon, one sheet of frosted silver, in the heavy ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... of the glen fell back, grew lower. The leap of the water was not so marked; there were long pools of quiet. Their path had been a mounting one; they were now on higher earth, near the plateau or watershed that marked the top of the glen. The bright sky arched overhead, the sun shone strongly, the air moved ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston

... of which have been so gratifying. I hope to ascend the Rovuma, or some other river North of Cape Delgado, and, in addition to my other work, shall strive, by passing along the Northern end of Lake Nyassa and round the Southern end of Lake Tanganyika, to ascertain the watershed of that part of Africa. In so doing, I have no wish to unsettle what with so much toil and danger was accomplished by Speke and Grant, but rather ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone

... deforestation in watershed areas; soil erosion; air and water pollution in Manila; increasing pollution of coastal mangrove swamps which are ...
— The 1998 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... is irregular, and physically diversified. In the N.W. are the bleak Hiraethog ("longing") hills, sloping W. to the Conwy and E. to the Clwyd. In the N. are Colwyn and Abergele bays, on the S. the Yspytty (Lat. Hospitium) and Llangwm range, between Denbigh and Merioneth. From this watershed flow the Elwy, Aled, Clywedog, Merddwr and Alwen, tributaries of the Clwyd, Conwy and Dee (Dyfrdwy). Some of the valleys contrast agreeably with the bleak hills, e.g. those of the Clwyd and Elwy. The portion lying between Ruabon ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various

... the uniformity of this upland plain, which still ascended eastward to the higher, bleaker Upper Pusterthal. This valley continues to mount to yet more sterile regions, until, reaching the great watershed of the Toblacher Plain, which sends part of its streams to the Adriatic, the others to the more distant Black Sea, it gradually dips down again to the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various

... which I refer is that of the watershed of a country being precisely adapted to draining purposes. The rivers just fit their own particular beds: the latter occupy the lowest grounds, and get broader and deeper as they advance; pebbles, gravel, and sand all occupy the best ...
— A Candid Examination of Theism • George John Romanes

... only, but states and the national government as well, should provide forests for the future, and this is the greatest duty of all, for much of the most important work can only be done by a power that can control the entire watershed at ...
— Checking the Waste - A Study in Conservation • Mary Huston Gregory

... part, and it comprises the most fertile lands and the most populous interior towns of the Republic. The highest part of the valley is about 600 feet above sea-level and is situated at its middle point, near the city of Santiago, where a line of low hills dividing the valley into two parts forms a watershed for its rivers. The northwestern of these two sections is known as the Santiago or Yaque valley and forms the greater portion of the basin of the Yaque del Norte, while the southeastern half, through which the Yuna River flows, is the superb Royal ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich

... Belgrade and follows the valley of the Morava to Nish; thence it branches off eastwards, going through Sofia and again crossing all Bulgaria to reach Constantinople, while the route to Salonika follows the Morava southwards from Nish and crosses the watershed into the valley of the Vardar, which flows into the Aegean. But even this road, following the course of the rivers Morava and Vardar, only went through the fringe of Serb territory, and left untouched the vast mountain region between the Morava ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth

... head to foot like a veil. In order to show what was the state of our knowledge of the country down to 1879, he would read part of a paper by Mr. Markham on "The Upper Basin of the Kabul River." "This unknown portion of the southern watershed of the Hindu Kush is inhabited by an indomitable race of unconquered hill-men, called by their Muslim neighbours the Siah-posh (black-clothed) Kafirs. Their country consists of the long valleys extending from the Hindu Kush to the Kunar ...
— Memoir of William Watts McNair • J. E. Howard

... fullness and equipoise at all seasons, and its gently-flowing currents give it further the character of a lake, or of the sea itself. Of the Hudson it may be said that it is a very large river for its size,—that is for the quantity of water it discharges into the sea. Its watershed is comparatively small—less, I think, than that of the Connecticut. It is a huge trough with a very slight incline, through which the current moves very slowly, and which would fill from the sea were its supplies from the mountains cut off. Its fall from Albany to the bay ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce

... most of our horses and men, ate an al fresco lunch under the projecting eaves of a mossy Kamchadal house, and started at two o'clock for Malqua, another village, fifty or sixty miles distant, across the watershed of the Kamchatka River. About sunset, after a brisk ride of fifteen or eighteen miles, we suddenly emerged from the dense forest of poplar, birch, and mountain ash which had shut in the trail, and came out into a little grassy opening, ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan

... at right angles to the apparent axes of elevation, would be the one to examine. If you go to the head of Glen Roy, attend to the apparent shelf above the highest one in Glen Roy, lying on the south side of Loch Spey, and therefore beyond the watershed of Glen Roy. It would be a crucial case. I was too unwell on that day to examine it carefully, and I had no levelling instruments. Do these fragments coincide in ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin

... demanded Bob again. "You get your value, don't you? The Forest Service protects your watershed, and that's where you get your water. Why shouldn't you pay for that service, just the same as you pay for a ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White

... long story if I told you why." She hesitated and then went on: "I wonder whether you would look at this analysis and tell me what you think—I mean if you think there is ore of that kind on the Northern slope of the Ontario watershed." ...
— The Lure of the North • Harold Bindloss

... our fast and sent forward the caravan, we at once began to descend the southern Pass, the Khuraytat el-Zib. Here the watershed of the Wady Surr heads; and merchants object to travel by its shorter line, because their camels must ascend two ladders of rocks, instead of one at the top of the Wady Sadr. The Col was much longer and but little less troublesome than its northern neighbour; the formation was the same, and forty-five ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton

... of Slavs, Lithuanians, Poles and others. It has an area of 208,738 square miles. It is mountainous in the south and center, but in the north there is a wide plain extending to the German Ocean and the Baltic Sea, and forming part of the great watershed which stretches across Europe. Its soil, except in the more rugged and mountainous districts, is prolific, being well watered and bearing abundant crops of the ordinary cereals. Potatoes, hemp, and flax are very abundant crops and the sugar beet is extensively ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall

... half-dilemma, is prospective as well as retrospective will hardly form a subject of objection for any one but a mere fault-finder. From the top of a watershed you necessarily survey both slopes. The tendency which we have been discussing is certainly more prevalent in the second half of the century than in the first half. It is prominent in Dumas fils, with whom we shall ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury

... Kreli's kraal, but the chief was in retirement under the hands of a witch-doctor, so we did not see him. The scenery along the watershed between the Kei and the Kobonqaba is wonderfully beautiful. The weather was calm and clear; the ocean like a world of sapphire fringed with snow. The populous villages of the Natives stood on every ledge; sleek cattle grazed in every valley. The people looked prosperous and contented. ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully

... family ardently fought for Troup. Young Toombs was but fifteen years of age, but politics had been burnt into his ardent soul. Wilkes had remained a Union county until this campaign, when the Troup and Toombs influence was too strong for the North Carolina faction. Wilkes, in fact, seemed to be a watershed in early politics. It was in close touch with Jackson and Calhoun, with Clarke and Crawford, and then with Clarke and Troup. On the one side the current from the mountain streams melted into the peaceful Savannah and merged into the Atlantic; on the other they swept into the Tennessee and hurried ...
— Robert Toombs - Statesman, Speaker, Soldier, Sage • Pleasant A. Stovall

... came from their forest lairs to gaze with wondering eyes at these unfamiliar intruders on their haunts. The Mascoutens were friendly, and supplied the travellers with bison flesh and venison, and with guides to direct them over the watershed to the Wisconsin. They carried the canoes over a forest trail, and launched them on this river; and then with exulting hearts swept forward on the last stage of their journey to the Mississippi. At ...
— The Jesuit Missions: - A Chronicle of the Cross in the Wilderness • Thomas Guthrie Marquis

... the Indian point of view, for this was Indian Story Land, the most prized, the most beautiful, the most prolific in fish and game in all the continent. Never had the red man clung with such tenacity to any section of his hunting grounds as did the Northern Sioux to this, the north and northeast watershed of the Big Horn Range. Old Indian fighters among the men shook their heads when the quartermaster selected a level bench as the site on which to begin the stockade that was to enclose the officers' ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King

... is the most important of all the tributaries of the Tigris. It rises near Konia, in the district of Karasu, about lat. 32 deg. 20', long. 44 deg. 30', a little west of the watershed which divides the basins of Lakes Van and Urymiyeh. Its general course for the first 150 miles is S.S.W., after which for 25 or 30 miles it runs almost due south through the country of the Tiyari. Near Amadiyeh it makes a sudden turn, and flows S.E. or S.S.E. to its junction with the Rowandiz branch ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson

... thence to the St. Lawrence River and the Great Lakes; a natural system of waterways connected each with the other and all with the Mississippi and Missouri, the Arctic Ocean, and Hudson's Bay; nay, more, with the North Pacific also; so that with a few "portages", or carryings of canoes from one watershed to another, a traveller of any enterprise, accompanied by a sturdy crew, can cross the broad continent of North America at its broadest from sea to sea ...
— Pioneers in Canada • Sir Harry Johnston

... sent forward the caravan, we at once began to descend the southern Pass, the Khuraytat el-Ziba. Here the watershed of the Wady Surr heads; and merchants object to travel by its shorter line, because their camels must ascend two ladders of rocks, instead of one at the top of the Wady Sadr. The Col was much longer and but little ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton

... matter of fact, it is astonishing how long communities may drink sewage-laden water with comparative impunity, so long as the sewage contains no typhoid discharges. One case of typhoid fever imported into a watershed will set a ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson

... Yet both arrive at last; and in his tower The slumberous watchman wakes and strikes the hour, A mellow, measured, melancholy sound. Midnight! the outpost of advancing day! The frontier town and citadel of night! The watershed of Time, from which the streams Of Yesterday and To-morrow take their way, One to the land of promise and of light, One to the land of ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... Morava, they captured the important city of Naissus (now Nisch), "the first city of Illyricum". Here Theudemir tarried for a space, sending on his son with a large and eager comitatus farther up the valley of the Morava. They reached the head of that valley, they crossed the watershed and the plain of Kossova, and descended the valley of the Vardar. Monastir in Macedonia, Larissa in Thessaly were taken and sacked; and a way having thus been made by these bold invaders into the heart of the Empire, a message ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin

... the Controller Bay region of Alaska, in connection with certain coal deposits and reservations. In our trip to the Canadian Rockies, I secured personally, as an investment, certain timber lands in British Columbia at the headwaters of the Yukon watershed, and my purpose is to cut the timber on these lands, to be eventually floated down the rivers and used in the various mines and mining camps, now being developed in both the Yukon ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Yukon • Ralph Victor

... Thomas G. Zarger, Jr., Botanist, is handling the black walnut work in connection with other investigations of "Minor Forest Products." The headquarters is at Norris, Tennessee. Charles V. Kline, now Assistant Chief of the Watershed Protection Division, still keeps his old interest in the black walnut and tree crop program. Definite and important results are bound to follow from so sustained and well organized a project. Most state agencies complain of lack of appropriations and ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Thirty-Fourth Annual Report 1943 • Various

... station in Old Servia, and the point from which all invasions from the east entered Montenegro; and the ride was by far the most interesting of all that I made in the two principalities. From the valley of Zupa we rose on a plateau known as the Lola Planina, on which the watershed is to the north and east and into the Danube. We rode through Drobniak a province the right to which was still theoretically disputed between Turk and Christian, the fruition of peace belonging to the latter; ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman

... a project which was abandoned owing to the opposition of the Florentines (Tac. Ann. i. 76, 79). In the middle ages the whole of its valley from Arezzo to Chiusi was an uninhabitable swamp; but at the end of the 18th century the engineer Count Fossombroni took the matter in hand, and moved the watershed some 25 m. farther south, so that its waters now flow partly into the Arno and partly into ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 1 - "Chtelet" to "Chicago" • Various

... I'm sure he can't. If he builds a reservoir, where could he get enough water to fill it? The watershed above us is too small. He couldn't impound more than three thousand acre feet of flood waters at ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet

... impossible to interpret with certainty. The phrase, "the Highlands which divide those rivers that empty themselves into the river St. Lawrence from those which fall into the Atlantic Ocean," meant according to the American reading a watershed which was a marshy plateau, and according to the British version a range of hills to the south which involved some keen hairsplitting as to the rivers they divided. The intentions of the parties to the original ...
— The Canadian Dominion - A Chronicle of our Northern Neighbor • Oscar D. Skelton

... be described for fishing purposes as beginning at Sicamous junction and ending a little below Spence's Bridge, including the Shuswap and Okanagan lakes, Kamloops, Nicola, and Mammit lakes, and the mountain lakes in the neighbourhood, all of which are more or less part of the Thompson watershed. Of this country the town of Kamloops is the centre, situated at the junction of the north and south branches of the river, and seven miles above Kamloops Lake, its name meaning, in the Thompson language, "the meeting of the waters." By virtue of its position it ...
— Fishing in British Columbia - With a Chapter on Tuna Fishing at Santa Catalina • Thomas Wilson Lambert

... in the land beyond the barrier of the Yukon watershed. It is a world apart, beyond, and the other land, the land where the battle of civilization still fluctuates, still sways under the violent passions of men, ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum

... the United States to discard the due north line, to seek to the west of that line the undisputed highlands that divide the rivers which empty themselves into the River St. Lawrence from those which fall into the Atlantic Ocean, to find the point in the 'watershed' of these highlands nearest to the north line, and to trace a direct course from it to the monument already established. "If this principle had been adopted," says Sir Sandford Fleming, the eminent Canadian engineer, "a straight line would ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot

... apparently tributary to the Murchison, we resumed our course for three or four miles up a branch of the stream upon which we had been encamped, which terminated at a gentle stony ascent; another mile brought us to its summit, which proved to be the watershed between the Gascoyne and Murchison; its elevation was found to be 1,500 feet above the sea. From this ridge a short descent northward led us to the head of a watercourse, which we followed in the same direction for ...
— Journals of Australian Explorations • A C and F T Gregory

... of gold and silver, an invention and magnificence till then never seen. Besides all this, he had an infinite quantity of silver and gold unwrought in Cuzco.' The counterpart of all these marvels Raleigh hoped to find, when he had sailed up the Orinoco to its watershed. ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson

... even preferable to that through our own territory. By the former, the distance from Europe to Asia is some thousand miles shorter than by the latter. Passing close to the northern shore of Lake Superior, traversing the watershed which divides the streams flowing toward the Arctic Sea from those which have their exit southward, and crossing the Rocky Mountains at an elevation some three thousand, feet less than at the South Pass, the road could here be constructed with comparative ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various

... chord of an arc is the chord of four times the arc: and the sum of four sides of a certain pentagon is equal to the fifth. This is the capital of the column, the crown of the arch, the apex of the pyramid, the watershed of the elevation. Oh! J. S.! J. S.! groans Geometry—Summum J. S. summa injuria![271] The other J. S., Joseph Scaliger,[272] as already mentioned, had his own way of denying that a straight line is always the shortest distance between two points. A parallel might be instituted, but not in half ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan

... of the Sevier, we are on the summit of a great watershed. The Sevier itself flows north and then westward into the lake of the same name. The Rio Virgen, heading near by, flows to the southwest into the Colorado, 60 or 70 miles below the Grand Canyon. The Kanab, also heading near by, runs ...
— Canyons of the Colorado • J. W. Powell

... purpose. The Roman enslaved it, but left Caledonia and Hibernia free, the Cambrian, the Silurian, the Cornishman half-subjugated. The Saxon and Anglian enslaved the east, but scarcely crossed over the watershed of the western ocean. The Dane, in turn, enslaved the Saxon in East Anglia and Yorkshire. The Norman ground all down to a common servitude between the upper and nether millstones of the feudal system—the king ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen

... hour of my arrival. The next day I walked to Lake Hakone (where the Emperor has a summer palace), some eight miles away, in the hope of getting Fuji's white crest reflected on its surface; but a veil of mist enshrouded all. And then twice I went to the edge of the watershed at the head of the valley: once struggling through the snow to the Otome Pass, on an immemorial and nearly perpendicular bridle path, and once by the modern road to the tunnel which, with characteristic address, ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas

... broken, while at others they disappear altogether behind vertical rocks and overhanging woods. The heavy guns and the whitey-brown tilts of the baggage-waggons seem the largest objects in the procession, which are dragged laboriously up the incline to the watershed, their lumbering being audible as high as ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy

... gathered on the sinking bed of the ocean as soft ooze, or crumbling sand, or thick mud, or gravel and conglomerate. Now upheaved into an elevated table-land, now slowly carved again by rain and rill into valley and watershed, and now worn down once more into the mere degraded stump of a plateau, the crust underwent innumerable changes, but almost all of them exactly the same in kind, and mostly in degree, as those we still see at work imperceptibly in the ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen

... and would very much like to have one. Twice every week Sa Laea brought him food. Tobacco too, sometimes, when she could buy it or beg it from the trader at Siumu. Sometimes he would cross over to the northern watershed and catch a basketful of the big speckled trout which teem in the mountain pools. Some of these he would send by Sa Laea to the chief of Siumu, who would send him in return a piece of kava, and some ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke

... the wall everywhere, mingling their contributory waters with those of the twin torrents. The plateau seemed to be the watershed in which the drainage of the entire territory had its origin. Within those connecting caves, if a man knew their secret, he might hide from ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert

... get your prize,' he said, 'He's with a wild mob, somewhere round The mountains near The Watershed; He's honestly worth fifty pound, A noble horse, indeed, to win, But none of US can ...
— Rio Grande's Last Race and Other Verses • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson

... Col de Tenda and down the Roja valley direct to Ventimiglia. The other strange feature is that from near Isola in the upper Tinee valley southwards the political frontier does not coincide with the physical frontier, or the main watershed of the Alpine chain; the reason (it is said) is that in 1860 all the higher valleys of the Maritime Alps (on both sides of the watershed) were expressly excepted from the treaty of cession, in order that Victor Emmanuel II. might retain his right of chamois hunting in these ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... we strolled forth along a winding road—a good road, once more—ever upwards, under the bare chestnuts. At last the watershed was reached and we began a zigzag descent towards the harbour of Monterosso, meeting not a soul by the way. Snow lay on these uplands; it began to fall softly. As the luncheon hour had arrived we took refuge in a small hut of stone and ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas

... Ticino valley, as seen from across the lake, is very fine. I tried to sketch, but was fairly driven back by a cloud of black gnats. The ridges immediately at the back of the lake, and no great height above it, are the main dividing line of the watershed; so are those that rise from the Lago di Cadagno; in fact, about 600 feet above this lake is the top of a pass which goes through the Piano dei Porci, and leads down to S. Maria Maggiore, on the German side of the Lukmanier. I do not know the short piece between the Lago di ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler

... made up of scattered hamlets and farmhouses near Arezzo, upon the watershed between ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd

... left the car and stood round the tiny streams. They were on the watershed. The water in the one streamlet flowed to the Atlantic, that in its fellow to ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... border the river Seine, and form part of the great watershed of Lower Normandy, Nature has poured forth her blessings; and her daughters, who are here lightly sketched, dispense ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn

... the sea; it obscured the valley below and clung to the peaks like ragged garments. Up and out of this fog came the interminable procession of burden-bearers. The Countess paused to observe them and to survey the accumulation of stores which crowned the watershed. ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach

... slaves and herdsmen of the Mongol royal family. They were encamped near Sarikihar, the Saligol of Hyacinthe, in the district of Ulagai Bulak, which D'Ohsson identifies with the Ulengai, a tributary of the Ingoda, that rises in the watershed between that river and the Onon. One day Tagudshar, a relative of Chamuka, the chief of the Jadjerats, was hunting in this neighborhood, and tried to lift the cattle of a Jelair, named Jusi Termele, who thereupon shot him. This led to a long and bitter strife between Temudjin, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume VI. • Various

... landscape of Norway, on the long easterly slope that leads up to the watershed among the mountains of the western coast, is not unlike that of Vermont or New Hampshire. The railway from Christiania to the Randsfjord carried us through a hilly country of scattered farms and villages. Wood played a prominent part ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke

... like a river rolls Among the mountains, and thy song is fed By living springs far up the watershed; No whirling flood nor parching drought controls The crystal current: even on the shoals It murmurs clear and sweet; and when its bed Deepens below mysterious cliffs of dread, Thy voice of peace ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke

... covered the whole country. That is why rivers like the Darenth and Medway cut clean through the North Downs and fall into the Thames, instead of flowing eastwards down the later valleys. They started to carve their channels in the soft chalk in the days gone by, when the watershed went north and south down the slopes of the great dome. And the red gravels with the eoliths in them, concludes Prestwich, must have come down the north slope whilst the dome was still intact; for they contain fragments of stone that hail from ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett

... the purposes of this Act, be held to comprise all such territories within the dominions of Her Majesty as are bounded to the south by the frontier of the United States of America, to the east by the watershed between the streams which flow into the Pacific Ocean, and those which flow into the Atlantic and icy oceans, to the north by the 55th parallel of north latitude, and to the west by the Pacific Ocean, and shall include Queen Charlotte's ...
— Handbook to the new Gold-fields • R. M. Ballantyne

... with distinction, and marrying found himself obliged to resign his captaincy on his father's death to take charge of the iron-mills and mines, which had become far more important to the family than their extensive forest-holdings on the foot-hills of the western watershed ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell

... There was age in everything. Moss grew along the walls, and it was very quiet under the high trees. I did not know the name of the little river that went slowly through the meadows, nor whether it followed the custom of its French neighbours on the watershed, and was called by some such epithet as hangs to all the waters in that gap of Belfort, that plain of ponds and marshes: for they are called 'the Sluggish', 'the Muddy', or 'the Laggard'. Even the name of the Saone, far ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc

... you wish to finish your bed this fall, after planting and covering each bulb, press a four or five inch flower-pot lightly into the soil above it. This will act as a partial watershed to keep the drip of rain or snow water from settling in the crown of the bulb and decaying the bud. Or if you have plenty of old boards about the place, they may be put on the bed and slightly raised in the centre, like a pitched ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright

... Ts'u was now a Hwai River power instead of being a Han River and Yang-tsz power. Shuh and Pa are modern Sz Ch'wan, both inaccessible from the Han system. The Han system to its north was separated from the Wei system and the country of Ts'in by a common watershed. ...
— Ancient China Simplified • Edward Harper Parker

... themselves at different times at the mouths of almost all the rivers along what was known as the Wild Coast of Guiana, and penetrating inland through a good understanding with the natives, especially with the ubiquitous Carib tribes, carried on a barter traffic beyond the mountains into the northern watershed of the Amazon, even as far as the Rio Negro itself. This trade with the interior finds no place in the company's official minutes, for it was strictly speaking an infringement of the charter, and therefore ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson

... billions, swarming in the carafes on dining-room tables, and in every ewer and finger-basin, infecting everything it came in contact with. And the vision of Birmingham and the whole stretch of country up to the Elan watershed passed before me, stained with ...
— The Blue Germ • Martin Swayne

... looked as if he meant to be friendly. Then as the sweating mules slowly climbed the rutted track out of the town Dick began to point out the changing level of the land, the ravines, or barrancos, that formed natural drainage channels from the high watershed, and the influence of drought and moisture on the cultivation. Jake showed a polite interest, but inquired what amusements were to be had in Santa Brigida, about which Dick gave him as little information as possible. If he had understood Miss Fuller's hints, ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss

... and Spain and Italy. Some of the invading divisions could hardly advance at all. The howling storms made impassable the ungraded roads; the 1200 guns of the Grand Army sank into the mire. Horse-life and man-life fell and perished in the sleet of the mock-summer that raged along the watershed between the Dwina and ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various

... said, the channel's getting deeper, it was nearly dry a moment ago; see the current in it now? That's the flood tide coming up—from the west, mind you; that is, from the Weser side. That shows we're past the watershed.' ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers

... found to the northward receiving the waters of the northern part of the coast range in a similar manner is extremely probable, and that they form a better river, because the angle is more acute between the high ground, which must bound it on the N.E. and the watershed on the south. I therefore prepared to cross the Karaula, in hopes of seeing the head at least of such a river, and to explore the country two degrees further northward, but moving in a N.W. direction. My tent was struck, and I had just launched my ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt

... equal height, with the usual steep cliff-like sides all covered with verdure, stood prominently in the foreground, and the deep valleys upon either side, abounding in rich caroub-trees and olives, led directly to the sea, about six miles distant and far below. We now crossed the watershed, and the view increased in beauty as it embraced a complete panorama, with the sea upon three sides, to the north, south, and east, with the mountains of Asia Minor in the ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker

... Nile-Congo watershed; the Kagera, which drains into Lake Victoria, is the most remote headstream of ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... thin scattered fringe of bluffs was unsubmerged; and through all the gaps the fog was pouring over, like an ocean into the blue clear sunny country on the east. There it was soon lost; for it fell instantly into the bottom of the valleys, following the watershed; and the hilltops in that quarter were still clear cut upon ...
— The Sea Fogs • Robert Louis Stevenson

... range towards the south, "another sea which has never been sailed by your little boats [meaning the caravels] is visible. The people there go naked and live as we do, but they use both sails and oars. On the other side of the watershed the whole south slope of the mountain chain is very ...
— De Orbe Novo, Volume 1 (of 2) - The Eight Decades of Peter Martyr D'Anghera • Trans. by Francis Augustus MacNutt

... shouldered one another like the round-backed billows of the lake after the storm. We made our record. And for all that we were not so pressed nor so overcome with the dignity of our errand that we could not spare one afternoon to climb up to the Wabashiki Beacon. It lies on the watershed between the headwaters of the Maumee and the Wabash, a cone-shaped mound and a circling wall within which there was always wood piled for the beacon light, the Great Gleam, the Wabashiki, which could be seen ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al

... to trace upwards the course of the Balonne, until I found mountains to the north- westward of it; then, to endeavour to turn them by the west, and thus acquire some knowledge on that most interesting point, the watershed towards the Gulf. I left instructions with Mr. Kennedy to follow my track with the drays and main body of the party, and to set out on Monday, the 4th of May, when the cattle would have had three ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell

... except on cool or elevated slopes; New Hampshire,—throughout; the most abundant conifer of upper Coos, the White mountain region where it climbs to the alpine area, and the higher parts of the Connecticut-Merrimac watershed; Vermont,—throughout; the common spruce of the Green mountains, often in dense groves on rocky slopes with thin soil; Massachusetts,—common in the mountainous regions of Berkshire county and on uplands in the northern sections, occasional ...
— Handbook of the Trees of New England • Lorin Low Dame

... keep my money. When I finish logging in my present holdings, I'm going to pull out of that country and log twenty miles south of Sequoia. I have ten thousand acres in the San Hedrin watershed. Remember, Bill, the man who buys your timber will have to log it through my land—and I'm not going to log that quarter-section in the valley. Hence there will be no outlet for ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne

... were now combing the Lost Creek watershed. Phil knew the camp would be either at Peaceful Valley or higher up, near the headwaters of the creek. Before he reached the valley the steady bawl of cattle told him that the outfit was camped there. He topped the ridge and looked down upon Cattleland ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine

... her line not so much for herself as for others. It put her definitely, much more definitely than her convictions warranted, on the side of freedom against discipline. For indeed her convictions like most of our convictions kept along a tortuous watershed between these two. It is only a few rare extravagant spirits who are wholly for the warp or wholly for ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells

... crest of the Hill of Offence there is a wide view over the heights on both sides of the valley of the Brook Kedron. Their sides are worked into terraces, now green with springing grain, and near the bottom planted with olive and fig trees. The upland ridge or watershed of Palestine is cultivated for a considerable distance around Jerusalem. The soil is light and stony, yet appears to yield a good return for the ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor

... about twenty-four miles above the river mouth. In 1899 similar questions growing out of the extraordinary development of mining interests in the region about the head of Lynn Canal brought about a temporary modus vivendi, by which a convenient separation was made at the watershed divides of the White and Chilkoot passes and to the north of Klukwan, on the Klehini River. These partial and tentative adjustments could not, in the very nature of things, be satisfactory or lasting. A permanent disposition of the matter ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... a heavy storm having cast nearly two inches of rainfall upon part of the watershed. On the crest of the flood it was fast running and there was no delay, no stopping between dawn and dusk. Standing all day at the sweeps Rasba cleared the shore in sharp bends, avoided the obstacles in mid stream, and outran the wave crests and the racing ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears

... North of that watershed the fronts were fluid, if the scattered bodies of French Territorials and German cavalry could be said to constitute a front at all; and there was a strenuous race and struggle to turn the respective flanks. Neither side, it was soon apparent, would succeed in that object, and the practical question ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard

... thrown far out beyond the western ranges, was all that stood between the grasping power of Great Britain, and the realization of her desire for absolute dominion over the western country. The ambitious projects of her rebel children must be defeated, and they must be driven back beyond the great watershed which they had crossed. The western waters were to be preserved for the red allies of England, who supplied her merchants with furs and peltries. The great "game preserve," as Roosevelt called it, must not be invaded. Years before, ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce

... from the Crown in 1670, was in the language of modern Liberalism—" wonderfully liberal,"[130] comprising not only the grant of the exclusive trade, but also of full territorial possession, to all perpetuity, of the vast lands within the watershed of Hudson's Bay. The Company at once established some forts along the shores of the great inland sea from which it derived its name, and opened a very lucrative trade with the Indians, so that it never ceased paying rich dividends to ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... its course north-easterly. I was surprised to find a creek running in that direction, expecting rather to find the fall of the whole region to the opposite point, as we are now in the midst of the hill-country that forms the watershed, that sends so many rivers into the sea on the west coast. The hills forming these watersheds are almost uniformly composed of granite, and generally lie in almost parallel lines, nearly east and west. They are mostly flat-topped, and at various points present straight, rounded, ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles

... eastward toward the Mormon settlement, passing the watershed at a height of 8,025 feet. After fifteen miles of travel we arrived at the Mormon colony called Pacheco, and situated on the Piedras Verdes River. It consists of small wooden houses lying peacefully on ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz

... them an irregular line of pale blue mountains, of which Wachusett is the most southerly peak, and which is in fact a portion of the White Mountain range extending through New Hampshire and into the northern part of Maine. The watershed between these two forms the valley of the Concord and Merrimac Rivers, which is the first military line of defence in New England west of the sea-coast. It is for this reason that the first struggle ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns

... which is within the jurisdiction of the Canadian Government and in which the bulk of the gold has been found, has a total area, approximately, of 192,000 square miles, of which 150,768 square miles are included in the watershed of the Yukon. Illustrating this, so that it may appeal with definiteness to the reader, it may be said that this territory is greater by 71,100 square miles than the area of Great Britain, and is nearly three times that of all ...
— Klondyke Nuggets - A Brief Description of the Great Gold Regions in the Northwest • Joseph Ladue

... We lay about a mile from the shore, and saw a low flat coast stretching before us. It was the delta of the river San Juan, into which flows the drainage of a great part of Nicaragua and Costa Rica, and which is the outlet for the waters of the great lake of Nicaragua. Its watershed extends to within a few miles of the Pacific, for here the isthmus of Central America, as in the great continents to the north and south of it, sends off by far the largest portion of its drainage to the Atlantic. In the rainy season the San Juan is a noble river, and even in the dry months, ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt

... of the watershed they came down into a level country where were great stretches of forest and many streams, and through these great stretches they ran steadily, hour after hour, the sun rising higher and the day growing warmer. Buck was wildly glad. He knew he was at last answering the call, running by the side of ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London

... my paper, then the Evening Sun, counselled the people to boil the water pending further discoveries, then took my camera and went up in the watershed. I spent a week there, following to its source every stream that discharged into the Croton River and photographing my evidence wherever I found it. When I told my story in print, illustrated with the pictures, the town was astounded. The Board of Health sent inspectors to the watershed, ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis

... the Mississippi still carried to the sea cargoes twice the value of those that sought the Lakes and the Erie Canal, though in the import trade these proportions were reversed. At this time a line drawn east and west through the centre of Ohio marked the commercial watershed. Not until after the Civil War did the glories of the Mississippi ...
— The Railway Builders - A Chronicle of Overland Highways • Oscar D. Skelton

... of Olley's Creek was broad and open, and the country beyond my right was more practicable than the tangled wilderness on the northern slope of the watershed. We had got beyond the denser thickets of the loblolly pine, and could better see what we were about. The old Sandtown road south of Cheney's crossed the creek on a wooden bridge which was commanded by a fortified ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox

... the afternoon, when we found, at last, a passage over the marsh, but made vain attempts to cross the sandstone range in no less than four different places; the ponies were so weak and the route so precipitous that each time we were obliged to return. At length we reached the watershed, from one side of which the streams ran down to Prince Regent's River, and from the other to the Glenelg; the rocks on the south side were ancient sandstone resting on basalt, and on the opposite the ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey

... himself for some time in making astronomical observations. He continued his explorations beyond those of Schoolcraft and Lieutenant Allen, and followed up the rivulets that entered the lake, thoroughly exploring its basin or watershed. ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau

... appeared to be the general watershed of the district, ran several small streams, that united in the middle of it in one deep gulch, which overflowed in winter with a foaming torrent— although there was now little or no water, and the grass and ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson

... and far sierra spread The fulgent rays of fading afternoon, Showing each utmost peak and watershed All clarified, each tassel and festoon Of floating cloud embroidered overhead, Like lotus-leaves on bluest waters strewn, Flushing with rose, while all breathes fresh and free In peace and ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger

... proper, the territorial empire of Sargon does not seem to have extended quite up to the Zagros watershed; but his sphere of influence included not only the heads of the Zab valleys, but also a region on the other side of the mountains, reaching as far as Hamadan and south-west Azerbaijan, although certainly not the eastern or northern districts of the latter ...
— The Ancient East • D. G. Hogarth

... there ports in abundance for the shelter of galleys, but the land behind was all that could be desired. River indeed there was none capable of navigation, but the very shortness of the watershed which precluded the possibility of great streams brought with it a counterbalancing advantage; for the mountains rise so steep and high near the coast that the Corsairs' look-out could sight the vessels to be attacked a long way out to sea, and thus give notice ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole

... with this great woman of letters for both the two reasons already mentioned. She represents the rationalism of the old Victorian Age at its highest. She and Mill are like two great mountains at the end of that long, hard chain which is the watershed of the Early Victorian time. They alone rise high enough to be confused among the clouds—or perhaps confused among the stars. They certainly were seeking truth, as Newman and Carlyle were; the slow slope ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton

... ate my bread, finished my jug of wine, and pushed on so vigorously that by noon I was in the heart of the mountains. To cut the narrative short, after one cold night in the open and one more day's march, having surmounted the watershed of Lombardy and Tuscany, I found myself within view of the frontier, saw the guard- house with the red and white posts of the Grand Duchy, and two sentries with muskets walking up and down—a sharp ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett

... he and Grandmother carved out of the wilderness in the last years of 1700 and where Father was born in 1802, lies just over the hill on the western knee of Old Clump, and is in the watershed of West Settlement, a much broader and deeper valley of nearly a dozen farms, and to which my home valley is a tributary. The sugar bush lies near the groin of the old mountain, the "beech woods" over ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs

... for the Glenns in ranch affairs, and next for himself, to arrange the purchase of still more of the upper Nahala lands. Do you know! he bought lots of the wilder and up-and-down lands, worthless for aught save water, and the very heart of the watershed, for as low as five and ten cents an acre. And he suggested I needed a change. I wanted to go with him to Honolulu. But, with an eye to expense, he decided Kilohana for me. Not only would it cost him nothing for me to visit at the old home, but he saved the price of the poor food I should have eaten ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London

... have been established at a greater or less number of stations for many years past, and data thereby afforded for estimating approximately the rainfall of any given district or catchment basin. The term "watershed" is one which it appears to me is frequently misapplied; as I understand it, watershed is equivalent to what in America is termed the "divide," and means the boundary of the catchment area or basin of any given stream, although I ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 595, May 28, 1887 • Various

... be all right. I daresay we could keep on rising till we found a way through-place where the watershed runs, ...
— Old Gold - The Cruise of the "Jason" Brig • George Manville Fenn

... the woodlands. The country may be less beautiful, while the population has grown so that Paulerspury has now nearly double the eight hundred inhabitants of a century ago. But its oolitic hills, gently swelling to above 700 feet, and the valleys of the many rivers which flow from this central watershed, west and east, are covered with fat vegetation almost equally divided between grass and corn, with green crops. The many large estates are rich in gardens and orchards. The farmers, chiefly on small holdings, are famous for their shorthorns and Leicester sheep. Except for the rapidly-developing ...
— The Life of William Carey • George Smith

... was situated on the upper watershed of the river Moxoto. There he raised his standard, thither flocked rebels galore, and in that direction, with due caution, President Barraca pushed columns of troops by road and rail from Bahia, from Pernambuco, and from Maceio itself. For Barraca ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy

... healthy place; it stands exactly on a watershed, on high ground, so that there is never fever or diphtheria in it. They have decided, after general consultation, that I am not to go away anywhere but to go on living at Melihovo. I must only arrange the house somewhat ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov

... docks!" she cried sharply, and the chauffeur touched his visor, and her life poised for twenty minutes on its watershed, although she ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon

... continued, "is formed by a vast alluvial deposit carried down as silt by the Mississippi. East of this the range of the Alleghanies, nowhere more than eight thousand feet in height, forms a secondary or subordinate axis from which the watershed falls ...
— Moonbeams From the Larger Lunacy • Stephen Leacock

... wonderful New England region. This they also climbed. How the sight of this great wilderness of forest and mountain must have thrilled him. He has said that the mountain, falling away into dark gulfs, was "dauntingly terrible." Here, as you stand upon this great watershed of New England, you will indeed find precious stones worth coming from afar to see. You, like Field, will carry away crystals, but unlike his, which he thought were diamonds, yours will gleam and sparkle in the halls of memory with a clearer radiance than any gems this ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand

... This tribe, dwelling in the watershed of the Limbang and Baram rivers, is closely akin to Muruts, but its tatu is very different. The men tatu but rarely, and then with stripes down the arms. The women, however, are decorated with most striking geometrical designs, shown on Pl. 142, Figs. 1 — 4. On the ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall



Words linked to "Watershed" :   road to Damascus, Great Divide, continental divide, occasion, geographical area, geographic area, juncture, geographic region, detention basin, line, retention basin, Fall of Man, drainage basin, landmark, geographical region



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