Basin of a river, in Geography, is the whole tract of country drained by that river. The line or boundary which separates one river-basin from another is called the watershed. By tracing these watersheds, the whole of a country or continent may be divided into a number of distinct basins; the basin of a lake or sea being made up of the basins of all the rivers that flow into it.
Basin
Chambers's Encyclopaedia, Volume 1: A to Beaufort, p. 775
Source scan(s): p. 0802