Note 648 — Chapter XI · —The Anthropo-Geography Of Rivers

Even where such rivers have a volume too scanty to float a raft, they yet point the highway, because they alone supply water for man and beast across the desert tract. The Oxus and Sir Daria have from time immemorial determined the great trade routes through Turkestan to Central Asia. The Platte, Arkansas, Cimarron and Canadian rivers fixed the course of our early western trails across the arid plains to the foot of the Rockies; and beyond this barrier the California Trail followed the long-drawn oasis formed by the Humboldt River across the Nevada Desert, the Gila River guided the first American fur-trapping explorers across the burning deserts of Arizona to the Pacific, and the succession of water-holes in the dry bed of the Mohave River gave direction to the Spanish Trail across the Mohave Desert towards Los Angeles. In the same way, Livingstone's route from the Orange River in South Africa to Lake Ngami, under the direction of native guides, ran along the margin of the Kalahari Desert up the dry bed of the Mokoko River, which still retained an irregular succession of permanent wells.648