The Rhine, its valley and history . open valley round thebends at Bingen and Mainz to Mannheim, at the con-fluence of the Neckar, in the very heart of a mastless port, Mannheim, as measured bythe tonnage of the wares handled, is now one of thegreat ports of Europe. So deeply is the Valley of the Rhine eroded into thehigh ground of Central Europe, that Mannheim standsonly 300 feet above the sea. From Bingen nearly toBonn the valley is cut as a gorge through broad up-lands of schistose rock, the average level of whose sur-face is some 1,500 feet above the sea, though the riverfalls
The Rhine, its valley and history . open valley round thebends at Bingen and Mainz to Mannheim, at the con-fluence of the Neckar, in the very heart of a mastless port, Mannheim, as measured bythe tonnage of the wares handled, is now one of thegreat ports of Europe. So deeply is the Valley of the Rhine eroded into thehigh ground of Central Europe, that Mannheim standsonly 300 feet above the sea. From Bingen nearly toBonn the valley is cut as a gorge through broad up-lands of schistose rock, the average level of whose sur-face is some 1,500 feet above the sea, though the riverfalls from only 250 feet at Bingen to 1 50 feet at green water, at one point more than seventy feetdeep, here flows rapidly between dark cliffs and steep,vineyard-clad slopes. Above Bingen the whole scene changes. The valleybecomes a hill-edged trough some twenty miles the raised banks of the river meandering in thesunken, fertile plain, the faces of the highlands arevisible on either hand. At Breisach, midway from4. The R/imeStrasburg to Basle, the level of the strip of lowland isjust over 600 feet high, while the dark, wooded moun-tains of the Black Forest and of the Vosges rise on eitherside to summits of 4,000 feet and over. The head ofthis trenched valley is at Basle, more than 500 milesfrom the sea; but the descent of the river within it isjust at first somewhat steep and the stream too rapidfor navigation, since Basle is at a level of over 800 feet. The lower reaches of some of the chief tributaryvalleys are also less than 600 feet above the sea—thatof the Neckar nearly to Stuttgartand that of the much-bent Main to beyond Wiirzburg. The valley of theLahnto Giessen, and of the Moselle to Metz are gorges ofsimilar deep incision, while yet another valley, knownas the Wetterau, offers a way from Giessen on the Lahnto Frankfurt on the Main which does not rise above600 feet, although no river flows through it. The valleys of these five rivers, the Rhine, the
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, bookpublisherlondo, bookyear1908
