A vast yellow stream, moving on to the distant sea--slow, gentle, inexorable, overwhelming.
All great things in nature have the power of crushing the human intellect.

Russians are thus crushed by the vastness of their country, of their rivers.

Man is but a small thing in a great country, and those who live by Nile, or Guadalquivir, or Volga seem to hold their lives on condition.

They exist from day to day by the tolerance of their river.
Steinmetz and Paul paused for a moment on the wooden floating bridge and looked at the great river.

All who cross that bridge, or the railway bridge higher up the stream, must do the same.