Explore "On the Air of the Dordogne" by Hilaire Belloc on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
All countries are built in vast inclined planes which lean up against one another and have ridges between. The great rivers run in the hollows where these planes meet at their lowest, and the watersheds are the lines along which their top edges come together -- and there, you might think, was the end of it: but there is much more.
You must not only say: "I have left the valley of the Thames, I have found the valley of the Itchen," nor only: "I have come over St. Leonards Forest; I am no longer among the Surrey rivers, I am on the headwaters of the Sussex Weald," nor only: "I have left the great fields of the Yonne and the Seine and I have come down on to the Plain of Burgundy and the Eastern Rivers" -- it is much more than that.