In places it was so shallow that our little boat
found difficulty in advancing. But this did not disappoint us; for
nothing like a mixed transit with transhipments had ever entered into
my plan, which looked only to an unbroken connection by rail from one
sea to the other. At four o'clock, satisfied that no useful purpose
could be effected by going farther up the stream, we stopped at a
collection of huts called Las Sandias,--not inappropriately, for the
whole sloping bank of the river, which here appeared to be little
better than a barren sand-bed, was covered, for a quarter of a mile,
with a luxuriant crop of water- and musk-melons, now in their
perfection. We purchased as many as we could carry off for a _real_.
They were full, rich, and juicy, and proved to be a grateful
restorative, after our day's exposure to the direct rays of the sun,
and their scarcely less supportable reflection from the water. The
melon-patch of Las Sandias is overflowed daring the rainy season, and
probably the apparently bare, sandy surface hides rich deposits of soil
below.
We found the stream here alive with an active and apparently voracious
fish, varying in length from fourteen to twenty inches, reddish in
color, and closely resembling the Snapper of the Atlantic coast of
Central America.
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