The animals might howl around him and glare at him with their shining eyes, and the alligators might lash the water into foam with their great tails, but he was bound for Golpho Triste and was not to be stopped on his way by anything alive.
But at last he came to something not alive, which seemed to be an obstacle which would certainly get the better of him.

This was a wide river, flowing through the inland country into the sea.

He made his way up the shore of this river for a considerable distance, but it grew but little narrower, and he could see no chance of getting across.

He could not swim and he had no wine-jars now with which to buoy himself up, and if he had been able to swim he would probably have been eaten up by alligators soon after he left the shore.

But a man in his situation would not be likely to give up readily; he had done so much that he was ready to do more if he could only find out what to do.
Now a piece of good fortune happened to him, although to an ordinary traveller it might have been considered a matter of no importance whatever.