Free TranslationFree Translation
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




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








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Watershed" Quotes from Famous Books



... of a wolf-pack's lair was not an encouraging winter refuge to drifting cattle. The boys even shook out their horses for a short gallop in leaving the sand dunes, and breathed easier once the open of the plain was reached. Following a low watershed, the brothers made a wide detour from the Beaver, but on coming opposite the homestead, near the middle of the afternoon, they turned and rode directly for the ranch, where a welcome surprise ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams

... lay up the Chatanika River and one of its tributaries until the Tanana-Yukon watershed was reached; then through the mountains, crossing two steep summits to the Yukon slope, and down that slope by convenient streams to the Yukon ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck

... evening of March 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 proportions of a ...
— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall

... though others would say less, 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 ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett

... 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 to confirm their ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone

... him to the top of the watershed between the North and the Middle Yuba. Here a scene of wild grandeur lay before him. Bare crags on either hand guarded the pass over the divide. Immediately in front lay a whole system of deep canons, clothed with primeval forests, wild and forbidding. Beyond ...
— Forty-one Thieves - A Tale of California • Angelo Hall

... shaken, covered her completely from 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 ...
— Memoir of William Watts McNair • J. E. Howard

... a huge ship floating keel upwards on the face of the ocean. This keel forms the frontier line between the kingdoms of Norway and Sweden: Sweden to the east, sloping gently from the hills to the Baltic, Norway to the west, running more abruptly down from their watershed to ...
— Norwegian Life • Ethlyn T. Clough

... which the Greeks defended against the Persians, the Romans against the Carthaginians and Egyptians, the Franks against Islam: namely, the chivalrous European way of thinking, which is ever being threatened by brutal force and puling baseness. We stand once more at a watershed of ...
— Gems (?) of German Thought • Various

... 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 have been drawn from the monument ...
— Canada under British Rule 1760-1900 • John G. Bourinot

... uncontrolled deforestation in watershed areas; soil erosion; air and water pollution in Manila; increasing pollution of coastal mangrove swamps which are important ...
— The 2000 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... 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 ...
— Canyons of the Colorado • J. W. Powell

... 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, about an acre in extent, ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan

... 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 ...
— Journal of an Expedition into the Interior of Tropical Australia • Thomas Mitchell

... Albanians, at any rate believe that many Albanians of those thus coming under Yugoslav rule would regard the change, as well they may, with equanimity. Suppose, then, that the frontier were to run along the watershed at the top of the mountain range to the west of Lake Ochrida. The people living to the east of this line in that district would acknowledge their Serbian origin. Thence passing to the neighbourhood of the village of ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein

... through an open country which abounded with British and Roman remains; no fewer than three entrenched camps, once fortifying the frontier of the Dobuni, lying within sight or hard by the road, which, skirting the summit of the watershed between the Thames and ...
— Edwy the Fair or the First Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake

... Privy Council of Canada issued a joint commission to Messrs. W. M. Simpson, S. J. Dawson and W. J. Pether, authorizing them to treat with the Ojibbeway Indians for the surrender to the Crown of the lands they inhabited—covering the area from the watershed of Lake Superior to the north-west angle of the Lake of the Woods, and from the American border to the height of land from which the streams flow towards the Hudson's Bay. This step had become necessary ...
— The Treaties of Canada with The Indians of Manitoba - and the North-West Territories • Alexander Morris

... the Turkish 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; that of war to the former, for ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman

... 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 off, meant ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc

... 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

... into the great lagoon south of Prtlekaj. Farther into the interior this river, according to Notti's statement, flows through several lakes: he also informed us that in summer it abounds very much in salmon (lienne). Some sandy hills formed the watershed between it and Nutschoitjin. The only animal we saw during our outward journey was a fox. On the other hand we found traces of hares, ptarmigan, and a couple of lemmings. After we had found a suitable camping-place, we began to build a snow-house, which, ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold

... what we might call the watershed of the Acts of the Apostles. Hitherto we have had various scenes, characters, personages to consider. Henceforth Paul, his labors, his disputes, his speeches, occupy the entire field, and every other man who is introduced into the narrative ...
— Bible Studies in the Life of Paul - Historical and Constructive • Henry T. Sell

... to individualism and the irresistible tendency toward unionism resulting from the advance of population, the topography of the country, and the cupidity of the people. The portage across the watershed from the streams of the Atlantic plain to those of the Ohio valley had been a matter of concern from colonial times. Artificial waterways were impossible from lack of water-supply on the high levels. ...
— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks

... "We can't afford to have any uproar started till we get our legislation properly cinched. Tomah seems to be attended to. But we need some pretty drastic special acts before we can go over the watershed and control the Noda waters and pull old Flagg into line. He's the last, isn't he?—the king-pin, ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day

... 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 ...
— Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino • Samuel Butler

... 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 basalt crept out, forming elevated hills. This position was remarkable ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey

... the watershed of the Pepacton (the East Branch of the Delaware), in the town of Roxbury, Delaware County, New York, that John Burroughs was born, and there that he gathered much of the harvest of his earlier books; it was there also that ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus

... 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 ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson

... corporation counsel of the city of Cincinnati, who on his walks abroad picks up nuts that he finds and examines them. He finds one on the dyke of the river that he considers remarkable and in conjunction with the president of this association conducts an advertising campaign in the watershed of the river where that nut was found in order to locate the tree, and succeeds eventually in ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 13th Annual Meeting - Rochester, N.Y. September, 7, 8 and 9, 1922 • Various

... controlled. The French, therefore, asserted a prima facie title to the valleys of the St. Lawrence and of the Mississippi (sec. 2); if there was a natural boundary between the two powers, it was the watershed north and west of the sources of the St. John, Penobscot, Connecticut, Hudson, Susquehanna, Potomac, and James. On neither side had permanent settlements been established far beyond this irregular ridge. This natural boundary had, however, been ...
— Formation of the Union • Albert Bushnell Hart

... in a dry August, for instance, whatever pollution the stream gets below towns and factories will be more concentrated and damaging than if the stream were flowing well. Pollution itself can affect the utility of water as well as people's enjoyment of it in a stream. A creek watershed that has been ignorantly farmed or roughly assaulted with bulldozers for urban development is an eyesore of erosive destruction, unproductive of crops, wildlife, or poetic appreciation, and can cause both heavier stream flooding in time ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior

... the map he carried, shewing the river running north-west, and depending on its correctness, Mr. Jardine bore to the north-west for 15 miles, travelling over sandy honey-combed rises, and low swampy plains, when he reached a watershed to the north, which he then supposed must be the head of Mitchell waters, finding himself misled by his map and that he had left the river altogether, he turned south by west and did not reach it before the ...
— The Overland Expedition of The Messrs. Jardine • Frank Jardine and Alexander Jardine

... difficulties were terrible. Half of it was up the Kennebec river along whose shallow upper reaches the men would have to drag their boats on chill autumn days in water sometimes to their waists; then they must take them over the steep watershed dividing the waters flowing northward to the St. Lawrence from those flowing southward to the Atlantic. Even when they embarked on the upper waters of the Chaudiere, which flows into the St. Lawrence near Quebec, the hardships were killing. The numerous rapids and falls on that swift and ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong

... went down behind a distant line of hill—the watershed of the Tagus—and immediately the air was cool. Without stopping, the driver wrapped his cloak round him, and the troopers followed his example. A few minutes later a cold breeze sprung up suddenly, coming from the north and swirling the dust high ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman

... the flowing Of sap upon the May-time, And the waters welling From the watershed, You who count the growing Of harvest and hay-time, Knowing these the telling Of ...
— Abraham Lincoln • John Drinkwater

... 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 ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt

... of clay, is usually laid on very carefully and firmly, and, when the surface is unbroken, answers fairly well as a watershed. A slight slope or fall is given to the roof. This roof subserves every purpose of a front yard to the rooms that open upon it, and seems to be used exactly like the ground itself. Sheepskins are stretched and pegged out upon ...
— Eighth Annual Report • Various

... which I consulted as Dick drove, said that we had passed out of Navarre into Alava; and suddenly I noticed that we had crossed the watershed, for the bright streams, instead of running down to the Bay of Biscay, were spinning silver threads towards the Ebro, on the way to tumble ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

... led steadily upward, leaving an ever-increasing slope (or khud) between it and the river, until it attained a height of over a thousand feet, when, turning to the left, it swung over the watershed, and began to descend into the valley of the Kishenganga. Through the haze we could make out Domel, our goal, lying far below, and then the ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne

... as the most important line of communication between Washington and the Ohio valley, though a high mountain summit must be passed, even by this route, before the tributaries of the Ohio can be reached. Half-way across the State to the southward, is a high watershed connecting the mountain ridges and separating the streams tributary to the Potomac on the north from those falling into the James and New rivers on the south. The Staunton and Parkersburg turnpike follows the line of this high "divide" ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox

... in the center of the state, and takes in the upper reaches and most of the watershed of the Yakima river. It has a population of about 20,000 in an area of 2,400 square miles. On its northwestern side it is bordered by two ranges of the Cascade mountains, while its southwestern side lies ...
— A Review of the Resources and Industries of the State of Washington, 1909 • Ithamar Howell

... 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 ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy

... region between the watersheds of the Shari, Congo and western Nile) into the southern half of the continent, which at that time was probably sparsely populated except in the north-west, east and south. The Congo basin and the south-western watershed of the Nile at the time of the Bantu invasion would have been occupied on the Atlantic seaboard by West Coast negroes, and in the centre by negroes of a low type and by Forest Pygmies; the eastern coasts of Victoria Nyanza and the East African coast ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various

... 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 in currents ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston

... straddles crest of the Nile-Congo watershed; the Kagera, which drains into Lake Victoria, is the most remote ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States

... our canal tunnels are very costly; but as, in working, they spare us what is the most expensive of all things, human labour-time, they are the most practical for our circumstances. Besides, in several cases we had no alternative except to dispense with the canals or to construct tunnels. The watershed you speak of is not the most considerable one: our greatest boring—connecting the river system of the Victoria Nyanza with the Indian Ocean—is carried, in one stretch of ten and a-half miles, 4,000 feet below the watershed; ...
— Freeland - A Social Anticipation • Theodor Hertzka

... 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 ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine

... the law of one of them, the outer world of physical life, we soon reach the summit of human strength. For a little while it is true, even in the life of nature, that our power grows with our days. But we soon reach the watershed, and then the opposite comes to be true. Down, steadily down, we go. With diminishing power, with diminishing vitality, with a dimmer eye, with an obtuser ear, with a slower-beating heart, with a feebler ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... 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 ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... 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 your timber ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne

... and very poor, it lies in a region where the land generally is so barren that but a small part of it has been ever broken by the plough; where the summers are hot and dry, and the winters long and cruel. Although in the watershed of the Gironde, it touches Auvergne, and its altitude makes it partake very much of the Auvergnat climate, which, with the exception of the favoured Limagne Valley, is harsh, to an extent that has caused many a visitor to flee from Mont-Dore in the month of August. In the deep gorges of ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker

... Up in the watershed I made some money, too. I bought up several bits of land there some years ago and made a pretty good guess that they would be bought up for water purposes later by ...
— Plunkitt of Tammany Hall • George Washington Plunkitt

... teeming in every water-pipe in countless 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 a ...
— The Blue Germ • Martin Swayne

... and Upper, to beyond the watershed and the Oppa-stream,—reserving only the Principality of Teschen, with pertinents, which used to be reckoned Silesian, and the ulterior Mountain-tops [Mountain-tops good for what? thought Friedrich, a year or two afterwards!]—Silesia ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... of our waking dreams." It is through missionary work like this, not altogether conscious and therefore all the more genuine, that his opinions have been diffused through the length and breadth of English and been incorporated into the common stock. "Gracious rills from the Hazlitt watershed have flowed in all directions, fertilizing a dry and thirsty land"—is the happily turned phrase of Mr. Birrell. If in our own day there are still persons who, looking upon criticism as a severe science, occasionally sneer at him as a "facile ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... remembered that comparison by a son of Oxford, of each moment, as it passes, to a watershed "whence equally the seas of ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... Scotia was abandoned without discussion. It was agreed that the boundary line should start at the mouth of the river St. Croix, and, running to a point near Lake Madawaska in the highlands separating the Atlantic watershed from that of the St. Lawrence, should follow these highlands to the head of the Connecticut River, and then descend the middle of the river to the forty-fifth parallel, thence running westward and through the centre of the water communications of the Great Lakes to the Lake of the Woods, ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske

... quite unique phenomenon in life, of which there are, to be sure, countless individual forms and measures, which, however, have no resemblance to any of the otherwise mentioned forms which may occur between persons. Victory is a mere watershed between war and peace; when considered absolutely, only an ideal structure which extends itself over no considerable time. For so long as struggle endures there is no definitive victor, and when peace exists a victory ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... such as this is, springs and brooks of course abound. The height of land upon which Princeton is situated is a watershed between the Connecticut and Merrimack Rivers, and of the three beautiful brooks having their source in the township, one, Wachusett Brook, runs into Ware River, and thence to the Connecticut, while the other two, East Wachusett and Keyes Brooks, get to the Merrimack by Still River ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 1, October, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various

... in South Spain, forming the watershed between the valleys of the Gaudiana (N.) and Guadalquivir (S.); has valuable deposits of lead, silver, ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... Sails, but seems motionless, as if aground; 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 darkness ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... good to sit around the glowing embers where the buffalo-steak sizzled and threw out an odour that made their mouths water, good to sip the hot coffee and to look out upon the great wilderness rising up to the distant watershed of the lower bank of the Congo. From the cliff above starlings flew out to seek their feeding-haunts where the big game fed; and there was a familiar visitor near them in the black and drab stone-chat, whose ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville

... mountainous eastern border is inhabited by the Momunds, Afridis, Arakzais, Zymukts, Waziris, who have never been subdued. Their sense of independence, however, does not prevent them from selling their friendship for ready money to the highest bidder. On the watershed of the Helmund and Indus dwell the independent Pathans and Biluchis. The Persian-speaking Kizilbashis in Kabul, comprise 3,000,000 of Shiahs, who are not Afghans, many of whose 30,000 fighting men are in the Ameer's regular army. The Tajiks— about 10,000 men—are chiefly in the ...
— Afghanistan and the Anglo-Russian Dispute • Theo. F. Rodenbough

... I. the great expanse of country west of the Mississippi called Louisiana. This region in the extreme south was no wider than the present State of Louisiana, but further north it widened out so as to take in the whole watershed of the Missouri and its tributaries, including in the extreme north nearly all the present State of Montana. In 1819 Florida was purchased from Spain, and that country at the same time abandoned its claims to a strip of coastland which now forms the sea-board ...
— Abraham Lincoln • Lord Charnwood

... intermediate between Russian and Polish, but quite independent of both. Its territory embraces, roughly speaking, that vast plain which lies between the Carpathians, the watershed of the Dnieper, and the Sea of Azov, with Lemberg and Kiev for its chief intellectual centres. Though it has been rigorously repressed by the Russian Government, it is still spoken by more than twenty millions of people. It possesses a noble literature, numerous folk-songs, not ...
— Cossack Fairy Tales and Folk Tales • Anonymous

... apparently trifling incidents of history, and of showing how the stream of centuries has been diverted in one or other direction by events the most insignificant. General Garfield told his pupils at Hiram that the roof of a certain court house was so absolute a watershed that the flutter of a bird's wing would be sufficient to decide whether a particular rain-drop should make its way into the Gulf of St. Lawrence or into the Gulf of Mexico. The flutter of a bird's wing may have affected all history. Some students ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various

... 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 ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet

... from eight or ten miles to thirty. We must regard as the eastern boundary of Phoenicia the high ridge which forms the watershed between the streams that flow eastward toward the Orontes, Litany, and Jordan, and those that flow westward into the Mediterranean. It is difficult to say what was the average width, but perhaps it may be fairly estimated at about fifteen miles. In this case the entire area would ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson

... through the trapdoor, while a third held down the lamp, and showed Hal o' Nabs, up to his middle in the darkling current, and stretching out his arms to receive the burden. The light fell upon the huge black circle of the watershed now stopped, and upon the dripping arches supporting the mill. In another moment the abbot plunged into the water, the trapdoor was replaced, and bolted underneath by Hal, who, while guiding his companion along, and bidding him catch hold of the ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... 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 was sent to Theudemir, inviting ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin

... Cliffe and the scenery of the valley of the Medway from Rochester to Maidstone there is all the difference between a November fog and a brilliant summer's day. At the foot of Rochester Castle, from which the long vista of the valley, lying between two chalk ranges of hills that form the watershed of the Medway, stretches far away to a distant horizon, the Esplanade extends along the east side of the river, and there it was that Edwin Drood and Rosa met for the last time and to speak of their separate plans. For ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin

... mission in 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 ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Yukon • Ralph Victor

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

... 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 the fortunate ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... the medical superintendent showed him about the place, but did not encourage him to talk about his symptoms. The grounds of the "occupation and exercise cure" comprised a farm of forty acres located among the hills of northern Westchester County in the Croton watershed, with large shade trees, lawns, flower gardens, and an inexhaustible supply of pure spring water from a well three hundred feet deep in solid rock. The main building, situated on a knoll adjacent to a grove of evergreen trees, contained ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer

... 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 little labor ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor

... best part is a small path in the thick wood uninvaded by the sun, and frequently is only a track, passes over slippery ridges of clay, disappearing in the mud puddles in the intervening hollows, and sometimes running into the bed of the brooks. The watershed between the Catarman and Calbayot is formed by the Salta Sangley already mentioned, a flat ridge composed of banks of clay and sandstone, which succeed one another ladder-wise downwards on both its ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.

... subject of Christian art, I must again refer, however briefly, to the Eastern origin of all art. It is evident that this had always flowed in streams of many types from that high watershed of Central Asia, where our human race is said to have been created, and whence all wisdom and knowledge have emanated. In the image of the Creator, man issued from thence, endowed with the gift of the creative power. Wave after wave of fresh and apparently differing nationalities followed ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford

... 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 a ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil

... trail and went on with a light step, until as he crossed the watershed and the country sloped to the south, he came to a wire fence and saw the black mouth of a railway tunnel beneath. It was now about two o'clock, and feeling hungry, he sat down where a bank cut off the wind, and took out some food he had bought at Hawick. He ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss

... contrast between the vast dull corn-flats to the north of the great river and the vines and acacias to the south. There is the same contrast in an ethnological point of view, for one is traversing the watershed that parts two different races, and enough of difference still remains in dialect and manner to sever the Acquitanian from the Frank. And historically every day brings one across some castle or abbey or ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green

... 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 and the Adriatic, which is really the ...
— The Balkans - A History Of Bulgaria—Serbia—Greece—Rumania—Turkey • Nevill Forbes, Arnold J. Toynbee, D. Mitrany, D.G. Hogarth

... 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 ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir

... formed the main river Kitangule, the principal feeder of the Victoria Lake from the west, in about 2 degrees S. latitude. Thus the same chain of mountains that fed the Victoria on the east must have a watershed to the west and north that would flow into the Albert Lake. The general drainage of the Nile basin tending from south to north, and the Albert Lake extending much farther north than the Victoria, it receives the river ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker

... Mehtar assesses his fighting strength at 8000 only, this number is probably not far wrong. Both the state and its capital are called Chitral, the latter being situated about 47 m. from the main watershed of the range of the Hindu Kush, which divides the waters flowing down to India from those which take their way into the Oxus. Chitral is an important state because of its situation at the extremity of the country over which the government of India exerts ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various

... 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 ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... following is a note of finding a nest and eggs I recorded in 1878:—On the 14th April I happened to be putting up for the day in one of the abandoned Karen houses of the old village of Podeesakai at the foot of the Warmailoo toung, a spur from the east watershed range of the Meplay river. Having to wait for guides, I had nothing particular to do that day, a very rare event in my forest work; I devoted it to a fruitless search for bears. I had returned tired ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume

... For inequalities of elevation, the valley of the Spean, 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 level with ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II - Volume II (of II) • Charles Darwin

... Again I am forced to retreat through want of water. The last five miles of the eleven the soil is becoming very sandy, with spinifex and a little grass. It is impossible to say in which way the country dips, for, in forty-five miles travelled over, we have not seen the least sign of a watershed, it is so level. Returned to where I left the others, followed our tracks back, and at eleven miles camped. Horses nearly done up with heavy travelling and the heat of the sun, which is excessive. It is very vexing and dispiriting to be forced back with only a little more than one hundred ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart

... plain 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 ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger

... which the organized ferments (bacteria) propagate the affection from animal to animal and from herd to herd. More than once I have seen such epizootic diarrhea start on the headwaters of a creek and, traveling along that stream, follow the watershed and attack the herds supplied with water from the contaminated channel. In the same way the disease, once started in a cow stable, is liable to persist for years, or until the building has been thoroughly ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture

... who dwelt near the great watershed that separates the Atlantic streams from the springs of the Watauga, the Kanawha, and the Monongahela were all cast in the same mould, and resembled each other much more than any of them did their immediate neighbors of ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt

... cheaper to construct in general, and less liable to accidents from fire and storms, and have the convenience for conveying the water from point to point, as the work of excavation advances, necessitating the removal of portions of the aqueduct forward. The watershed, or reservoir, of the Excelsior Company embraces the valley of the South Yuba and its affluents, and the entire cost of its eight amalgamated canals ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 455, September 20, 1884 • Various

... 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 illegitimate. But it was characteristically Dutch, and it was winked at, for ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson

... slope 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, ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London

... first sailed through Yugor Straits, and over the southern part of the Kara Sea to the mouth of the Mutnaja, a river debouching on Yalmal; they then rowed or towed the boats up the river and over two lakes to a ridge about 350 metres broad, which forms the watershed on Yalmal between the rivers running west and those running east; over this ridge the boats and the goods were dragged to another lake, Selennoe, from which they were finally carried down the River Selennaja to the Gulf ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold

... was the watershed dividing the sources of the Connecticut and St. Croix rivers from those which emptied into the St. Lawrence. By this the Americans gained all the land bordering their own rivers, while the British had the banks of all the rivers extending to the sea coast. Breach ...
— Lady Rosamond's Secret - A Romance of Fredericton • Rebecca Agatha Armour

... north direction and saw what I suppose will be a course to suit me tomorrow; otherwise it was my intention to have taken one man and a packhorse, and pushing over the range northward to see if we are near the north watershed, or to have found a practicable route. Ranges are covered with spinifex and rough stones. Hodgkinson shot a euro which will help us on and save ...
— McKinlay's Journal of Exploration in the Interior of Australia • John McKinlay

... corruption of Airyana vaega, namely Arran, should appear in Genesis? And if the dissimilarity of the two names is waived, is it possible in two lines to settle the much contested situation of Haran, and thus to determine the ancient watershed between the Semitic and Aryan nations? The Abbe Banier, more than a hundred years ago, pointed out that Haran, whither Abraham repaired, was the metropolis of Sabism, and that Magism was practised in Ur of the Chaldees ...
— Chips From A German Workshop - Volume I - Essays on the Science of Religion • Friedrich Max Mueller

... so-called black belts still weltered in unthrift and decay, as in the darkest reconstruction days. These belts were three in number. The first, about a hundred miles wide, reached from Virginia and the Carolinas through the Gulf States to the watershed of the State of Mississippi. The second bordered the Mississippi from Tennessee to just above New Orleans, and extended up the Red River into Arkansas and Texas. A third region of negro preponderance covered fifteen ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews

... 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

... the remains of more extensive waters, occur between Lake George and Bredalbane plains in the line of watershed as already observed. These are named Tarrago, Mutmutbilly, and Wallagorong, the latter being apparently a residuum of the lake which probably once covered the ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell

... showing Ch'en's position). 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

... splintered and shattered. A small, black-looking lake at the top of the pass contains to this day the bones of 500 Austrians and French who fought here in 1799. It is called the Totensee, or Dead Men's Lake. At this point one stands on a great watershed, dividing the rivers of the north from the rivers of the south. You may put one foot in a rivulet which is carrying water down the Aar Valley, and through the Lakes of Brienz and of Thun to the Rhine and North Sea, whilst you ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester

... where it is often quite wanting 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 southward; ...
— Handbook of the Trees of New England • Lorin Low Dame

... great watershed of Hawaii far up the densely wooded flanks of Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea—often snow-capped in winter—the Wailuku River roars through the very center of Hilo, principal town of the ...
— Legends of Wailuku • Charlotte Hapai

... was to map the country. This is done by timing the rate of march with a watch, taking compass-bearings along the road, or on any conspicuous marks—as, for instance, hills off it—and by noting the watershed—in short, all topographical objects. On arrival in camp every day came the ascertaining, by boiling a thermometer, of the altitude of the station above the sea-level; of the latitude of the station by ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke

... But the watershed of any engine—whatever may be its donkey-power, and whatever that name implies—slops back where a closed spout changes suddenly to an open gutter, and sets up independent lakes and rivers. This one sent its overflow towards Sapps Court, ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan

... 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 ...
— Brandon of the Engineers • Harold Bindloss

... which 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 ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson

... road whose entry had been barred to me by the soldiers. I 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 reminder of difficulties ahead. Beyond the ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett

... went down the watershed to the town of Panama. There we found a ship ready in port that was short of hands, and shipped on her to go round the Horn. She was named ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton

... south and east, whence the impulse came. The old Carolingian school, with its centre at Aix-la-Chapelle, is quite beyond our horizon. The Rhine had a great Romanesque architecture of its own. One broad architectural tide swept up the Rhone and filled the Burgundian provinces as far as the watershed of the Seine. Another lined the Mediterranean, with a centre at Arles. Another spread up the western rivers, the Charente and the Loire, reaching to Le Mans and touching Chartres. Two more lay in the centre of France, spreading ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams

... uncontrolled deforestation especially in watershed areas; soil erosion; air and water pollution in major urban centers; coral reef degradation; increasing pollution of coastal mangrove swamps that ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency



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



Copyright © 2024 e-Free Translation.com