Landscapes: Rivers and Lakes
Rivers and Lakes - The Great Dividers
I love to watch the movement of light on water, and I love to play in rivers and lakes, swimming or canoeing. I am fascinated by people who work with water - fishermen, boatmen - and by a way of life that is dominated by water.
Berlie Doherty
English novelist, poet, playwright and screenwriter
These bodies of water have been great separators of nations. Lake Constance separates Germany from Switzerland; the Rheine River has its Swiss and Austrian banks, later it keeps Germany and France apart. The Elbe splits Czech Republic from Germany and the Ardila River flows between Spain and Portugal.
This is not a European phenomenon. In Africa, the Zambezi is the border between Botswana and Zambia, between Namibia and Zambia as well as between Zimbabwe and Zambia. In the Americas, the Rio Grande partitions the United States from Mexico; the Motagua is the barrier between Guatemala and Honduras and the Iguazu River separates Argentina from Brazil.
Rivers and Lakes - The Great Connecters
Earth and sky, woods and fields, lakes and rivers, the mountain and the sea, are excellent schoolmasters, and teach some of us more than we can ever learn from books.
Sir John Lubbock, 4th Baronet of Avebury
Banker, Liberal politician, philanthropist, scientist and polymath.
However these same bodies of water are also great and thriving Waterways. The Rhine River connects the North Sea at Rotterdam, Netherlands to France and Germany, Switzerland, Austria and the Principality of Liechtenstein. The Danube is the watery highway linking Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Hungary, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania, Moldova, Montenegro and Ukraine and countries of the Black Sea.
The same is true of the great rivers in the Americas: the St. Laurence, Mississippi and Amazon. As well as the other giants, the Nile, Yangtze River, Ganges, Mekong River, Zambezi, Congo, Volga, Yellow River....
