1 {scene: A mighty river. The fantasy party stand on the bank, admiring the view.}
1 Alvissa: Behold the mighty Elusian River!
1 Lambert: We need to cross this? Look how wide it is!
2 Draak: My race call it Uk' Hai A' Mal Akh' Mor Dh'uk Har K'al Glo' Dhan U' K'ak Brak.
3 Alvissa: Oooh. So poetic. What does it mean? "Grand Majestic Rolling River of Immense Breadth" or something like that?
4 Draak: It mean "man who row sole boat from this side to that side charge lot of gold".

Now they're really making progress on the quest!

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2014-07-07 Rerun commentary: It's actually not that wide... you can see the opposite bank!

Rivers where I live (Australia) tend to be pretty narrow. You can pretty much always see the opposite bank easily, and probably even swim across without much difficulty. (Though I wouldn't recommend that in rivers north of the Tropic of Capricorn, due to the crocodiles.)

Only the Murray River, right near its mouth, gets even moderately wide. (In fact, that Wikipedia article contains a photo of the river at Murray Bridge, near the mouth, and you can see it's still really not very wide.)

I hear legend tell of rivers like the Mississippi or the Amazon that are ridiculously, insanely wide. One day I may see one.