noun
definition
(often in the plural) a rough section of a river or stream which is difficult to navigate due to the swift and turbulent motion of the water.
definition
A burst of rapid fire.
Examples of rapids in a Sentence
Cedar Rapids is in a rich agricultural country.
The Trengganu river is obstructed by impassable rapids at a distance of about 30 m.
Above this place the navigation is interrupted by rapids.
To escape this danger many of them moved down the river and settled on the waste lands beyond the rapids.
He continued the ascent of the Parana as far as the rapids of Apipe, and finding his course barred in this direction, he afterwards explored the river Paraguay, which he mounted as far as the mouth of the affluent called by the Indians Lepeti, now the river Bermejo.
They are full of rapids and reefs.
It is served by the Michigan Central, the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern, the Grand Rapids & Indiana, the Kalamazoo Lake Shore & Chicago, and the Chicago Kalamazoo & Saginaw railways, and by interurban electric lines.
The difficulty of ascending the rapids near Bingen is usually surmounted by the help of steam hauling machinery placed on the bank, though powerful tugs have also come into use for this purpose.
Nor are there any long rivers, and all are so broken by shallows and rapids that navigation is generally impossible except by means of flat-bottomed boats drawing only a few inches.
The former difficulties with the Des Moines Rapids of the Mississippi (which are passable for rafts and light boats at high water) have been overcome by a canal from Keokuk to Montrose constructed by the National Government.
The chief cities are Des Moines (pop. in 1905, 75,626), Dubuque (41,941), Davenport (39,797), Sioux City (40,952), Cedar Rapids (28,759), Council Bluffs (25,231) and Burlington (25,318).
It broadened and deepened many of the valleys; rounded the hills; turned aside many streams, causing changes in drainage and giving rise to innumerable waterfalls and rapids; and it formed the thousands of lakes, large and small, which dot the surface.
Other notable falls are those of the Genesee at Portage and at Rochester, Trenton Falls, the Falls of Ticonderoga, and a multitude of falls and rapids in the Adirondack region and along the shores of the upper portions of the Finger Lakes.
A system of waterways (the Geeste and Hadelner canals, meeting one another at Bederkesa) connects the estuary of the Weser with that of the Elbe; a canal between the Hunte and the Leda gives connexion with the Ems. On the upper Weser (above Bremen) the navigation, which is interrupted by occasional rapids, is assisted by locks and weirs.
The descent to the lower district is marked by the Barraconda rapids, formed by a ledge of rock stretching across the river.
From the Barraconda rapids to the Atlantic the Gambia has a course of about 350 m.
The Gambia is in flood from November to June, when the Barraconda rapids are navigable by small boats.
Above the rapids the stream is navigable for 160 m.
Champlain at once established friendly relations with the Indians and explored the St Lawrence to the rapids above Montreal.
He was the third white man to descend, and the second to descend successfully, the Lachine Rapids.
Although deep river channels are common, falls or impassable rapids are rare west of the Alleghany Plateau, and the state has an extensive mileage of navigable waters.
The power of the Indians was overthrown by General Anthony Wayne's victory in the battle of Fallen Timbers, fought the 10th of August 1794 near the rapids of the Maumee river a few miles above the site of Toledo, Ohio; and the Mississippi question was settled temporarily by the treaty of 1795 and permanently by the purchase of Louisiana in 1803.
On the coming of the first European, Jean Nicolet, who visited the place in 1634-1635, De Pere was the site of a polyglot Indian settlement of several thousand attracted by the fishing at the first rapids of the Fox river.
The rivers are shallow and more or less broken by rapids in the notches; rapids occur also near the outer border of the crystalline belt, as if the rivers there had been lately incited to downward erosion by an uplift of the region, and had not yet had time to regrade their courses.
This is well shown in the falls of the Potomac a few miles above Washington; in the rapids 01 the lower Susquehanna; and in the falls of the Schuylkill, a branch which joins the Delaware at Philadelphia, where the water-power has long been used in extensive factories.
Many of the rivers, elsewhere well graded, have rapids as they pass from the harder rocks of the piedmont to the semi-consolidated strata of the coastal plain.
Several rapids and the Falls of St Anthony (determining the site of Minneapolis) are signs of immaturity, resulting from superposition through the drift on the under rock.
The St Lawrence is far the most important Canadian river from the historic and economic points of view, since it provided the main artery of exploration in early days, and with its canals past rapids and between lakes still serves as a great highway of trade between the interior of the continent and the seaports of Montreal and Quebec. It is probable that politically Canada would have followed the course of the States to the south but for the planting of a French colony with widely extended trading posts along the easily ascended channel of the St Lawrence and the Great Lakes, so that this river was the ultimate bond of union between Canada and the empire.
The St Lawrence system, for instance, generates many thousand horse-power at Sault Ste Marie, Niagara and the Lachine rapids.
In the following year Cartier sailed up the river as far as the Lachine Rapids, to the spot where Montreal now stands.
The application of electricity to purposes of manufacture and transportation made the waterfalls and rapids in which the country abounds the source of an almost unlimited supply of energy capable of easy distribution for industrial purposes over wide areas.
The shores are sand, clay or loam throughout some 1300 m., with very rare rock ridges or rapids, and the banks rise low above ordinary water.
P. Banks in the Red River expeditions in March-May 1864, in which his gun-boats, held above Alexandria by shallow water and rapids, narrowly escaped isolation, being enabled to return only by the help of a dam built by Lieut.-Colonel (BrigadierGeneral) Joseph Bailey (1827-1867).
The former has recently been explored by Andre, who found it greatly obstructed by falls and rapids; the latter is about Boo m.
From the Uribante-Sarare junction to the Orinoco the length of the Apure is 645 m., of which Codazzi makes the doubtful claim that 564 are navigable, for there are some troublesome rapids 114 m.
Its upper portion has many rapids and falls.
A few miles below the lake, the river, after a succession of rapids, leaps over a cliff, making the Upper Fall, 109 ft.
It is served by the Pere Marquette, the Grand Rapids & Indiana and the Manistee & North-Eastern railways, and by steamboat line to Chicago and other lake ports.
Like the Coppermine, the only other large river of this part of Canada, it is rendered unnavigable by a succession of rapids and rocks.
As waterways all the rivers labour under the drawbacks of rapids, mud-banks at their mouths, banks overgrown with forest, sparse population, and currents liable to serious variations due to irregularity of supply from the mountains and sudden rainfalls.
The tributaries that flow westward to the Paraguay are consequently to some extent navigable, while those that run eastward to the Parana are interrupted by rapids and falls, often of a formidable description.
After two years spent in exploring the Niger, the navigating vessel was wrecked in passing through some of the rapids of the river, and Baikie was unable longer to keep his party together.
Pop. (1900) 4743, of whom 1277 were foreign-born; (1904 state census) 5239 It is served by the Grand Trunk and the Pere Marquette railways, and by steamboat lines to Chicago, Milwaukee and other lake ports, and is connected with Grand Rapids and Muskegon by an electric line.
The Niagara escarpment mentioned above, generally called "the mountain" in Ontario, is the cause of waterfalls on all the rivers which plunge over it, Niagara Falls being, of course, the most important; and in most cases these falls have eaten their way back into the tableland, forming deep gorges or canyons like that below Niagara itself, through which the water pours as violent rapids.
Niagara Falls, with rapids above and below, carry the waters of the upper lakes over the Niagara escarpment.
From Lake Ontario the St Lawrence emerges through the meshes of the Thousand Islands, where it crosses Archaean rocks, after which follow several rapids separated by quieter stretches before Montreal is reached at the head of ocean navigation.
Steamers not of too great draught can run the rapids going down, but vessels must come up through the canals.
Both the Lom and the Nyong (a more southerly stream) rise in the central plateau, from which they descend in splendid cascades, breaking through the parallel coast range in rapids, which indicate the extent of their navigability.
By 1685 a number of colonists had settled at this point, which became known as "The Falls" on account of the rapids in the Delaware here.
In April 1886 the frontier was drawn back to Wadi Haifa, a fortified camp at the northern end of the desolate defile, Batn-el-Hagar, through which the Nile tumbles amid black, rocky hills in a succession of rapids, and debouches on a wide plain.