I think that the [Big] river is a strong brown god

I do not know much about gods; but I think that the river

Is a strong brown god -  sullen, untamed and intractable,

Patient to some degree, at first recognised as a frontier;

Then only as a problem confronting the builders of bridges.

The problem once solved, the brown god is almost forgotten

By the dwellers in cities - ever, however, implacable.

Keeping his seasons and rages, destroyer, reminder

Of what men choose to forget. Unhonoured, unpropitiated

By worshippers of the machine, but waiting, watching and waiting.

T.S. Eliot, The Dry Salvages, Four Quartets. 1941

What Eliot says of the Upper Mississippi seems totally applicable to The Big River - The Clarence River.