It was evident they could not long hold out under their excessive thirst, and unless we should procure some fresh water, it would impossible for us to continue our journey.

On a closer examination, the river appeared to me much below its ordinary level, and its current was scarcely perceptible.

We placed sticks to ascertain if there was a rise or fall of tide, but could arrive at no satisfactory conclusion, although there was undoubtedly a current in it.

Yet, as I stood upon its banks at sunset, when not a breath of air existed to break the stillness of the waters below me, and saw their surface kept in constant agitation by the leaping of fish, I doubted whether the river could supply itself so abundantly, and the rather imagined, that it owed such abundance, which the pelicans seemed to indicate was constant, to some mediterranean sea or other.

Where, however, were the human inhabitants of this distant and singular region?
The signs of a numerous population were around us, but we had not seen even a solitary wanderer.
The water of the river was not, by any means, so salt as that of the ocean, but its taste was precisely similar.