current or stream of fresh water flowing in a bed or channel from its source into the sea.

The great as well as the middle-sized rivers proceed either from a confluence of brooks and rivulets, or from lakes; but no river of considerable magnitude flows from one spring, or one lake, but is augmented by the accession of others. Thus the Wolga receives above two hundred rivers and brooks before it discharges itself into the Caspian Sea; and the Danube receives no less, before it enters the Euxine Sea.