A wide river is excellent company

The Loire gives a great "style" to a landscape of which the features are not, as the phrase is, prominent, and carries the eye to distances even more poetic than the green horizons of Touraine. It is a very fitful stream, and is sometimes observed to run thin and expose all the crudities of its channel. But I speak of it as I saw it last; full, tranquil, powerful, bending in large slow curves, and sending back half the light of the sky. Nothing can be finer than the view of its course which you get from the battlements and terraces of Amboise. As I looked down on it from that elevation one lovely Sunday morning, through a mild glitter of autumn sunshine, it seemed the very model of a generous, beneficent stream. Indeed, throughout Touraine, it is half the charm of the Loire that you can travel beside it. A wide river, as you follow a wide road, is excellent company; it heightens and shortens the way.

A Little tour in France de Henry James (1900)

C’est du haut des remparts du Château de Blois que je regardais la Loire cet été. La nuit sera tombée quand mon train la longera ce soir. Ce devrait être une chose banale aujourd’hui d’être dans un pays le matin et dans un autre le soir-même. Je suis dans mon appartement ce matin, je me prépare à aller travailler, et ce soir je serai dans une autre chambre, je marcherai dans d’autres rues, je ne verrai pas les visages familiers... ça me donne un peu le tournis.