Definition of "fording"

By half past seven we were both pretty nearly all in, and wet from innumerable fordings of the river, so we stopped and boiled some hot water with the sugar left over from lunch.

1953, Aldo Leopold, Round River

There at the fording in the little boat the unknown man plays upon his lute.

1910, Rabindranath Tagore, “Gitanjali”, in Gitanjali and Fruit-Gathering‎, New York: Macmillan, published 1918, page 69