The whole White Mountain region abounds in deep narrow valleys, romantic glens, ravines, flumes, waterfalls, brooks and lakes.
For the successful negotiation of brooks a bold horse is required, ridden by a bold man.
The narrower part of the Tagus basin lies to the south, and the left-hand tributaries which drain it are almost all mere brooks, dry in summer.
The forget-me-not, a favourite with poets, and the symbol of constancy, is a frequent ornament of brooks, rivers and ditches, and, according to an old German tradition, received its name from the last words of a knight who was drowned in the attempt to procure the flower for his lady.
The great valley between the two is cut up into a series of self-contained basins, each serving as the gathering ground of the brooks that run down off the adjacent mountains.