El Paso herald. (El Paso, Tex.) 1901-1931, 1915-02-13
VALLEY Of MEI5E
RICH IN ROMANCE
Of WARilDP PEACE
Through It Hostile Armies
Marched to Take
Ancient Rome.
THREE NATIONS
TOUCH ITS BANKS

w TASHINGTON. D. c., Feb. ~
Nv The valley of the Meuse river,
extending through France,
Belgium and Holland, up and down
whose course two thousand years of
intermittent warfare has been waged,
forms the subject of a statement given
out by the National Geographic society:
Above every other valley, that of
the Meuse has become a battlefield. At
Liege, on the Mouse, the first great
battle of the war broke forth, and the
struggle blazed and scared all along
the picturesque splendor of this wild,
rugged-banked stream, directly south
ward through Belgium into France.
According TO the day by day dispatches,
some of the most fierce efforts are
SUI raging on its banks. Liege, Ma
muir, Dinant, Givet Sedan, Stenay, Yer
become familiar to Americans-an lie
along its course.
Three Countries Share the Mouse.
Three Ountries share the Mouse. It
rises in France, flows northward
through Belgium, crosses the Dutch
frontier, sweeps westward through
Holland, and empties into the
North sea. Its journey to the sea is
one of $50 miles, of which 400 are naVi-
gable. It's source is in the south Of
the French department Haute Marine
near the Monte Faucilles, whence it
Ardennes into Belgium near Sedan,
nOrthward into Holland near Maastrich,
and thence westward to the sea. 1t
bears several names along its course
Mouse, Macs, Mas, Merwede.
For Ages a Channel for Armies.
The valley of the Meuse for ages
has been a channel for the ebb and
flow of armies. 1t might be said to
drain one vast, historic battlefield.
Caesar pursued its path into the IN
4
tonic tribes pressed down between its
banks toward the wealth of Rome
Christian Europe has been settling its
differences along the valley of the
Meuse by force of arms down to the
present day
In the forest of Ardennes, the Mouse
flows through a country rich in ro-
of Charlemagne. Vine lands
and hop gardens lie further along its
banks, and then it washes great indus
trial cities, gathering to itself the
ashes, rust and acids of factory and
furnace waste. Finally, it drifts
through the flatIands of Holland, sup
plying the numerous canals which
lazily divide the plains Here and
there, as between Namur and Liege, it
cuts a narrow passage between wood
ed hills and cliffs, their difficult sides
dotted with pretty villas. Just before
reaching the sea, the Mouse, here the
Mas, divides, one branch flowing west,
and the other mingling with the Rhine
TO empty past Rotterdam at the Hook
Of Holland.
In the beginning of its course, the
valley of the Meuse is a wide meadow
and. 1t then breaks itself a gorge,
-ringed with broken, tangled banks.
There is a wealth of scenic beauty
along its way. ChateauX, castles cot
ages and farmsteads sprinkle the val
ley, Though far more thicllly than these
evidences of the living are clustered
-he place names rescued from forget
lulness by legends and historic rec
Jrds.
The camp of the Aduatuci described /
~ Caesar is marked by a citadel on a
ill between this river and the Sambre,
is largest tributary. At Dinant Philip
he Good, duke of Burgundy, is said to
nave caused 500 people to be drowned
n its waters But the river has long
vince forgotten the good dukes
Irrightly slaughter in a present time
more stirring, more titanic and far
more costly in human life"