THE EARTH. 195 



yet there are still a number of small canals that 

 carry a great body of waters to the sea ; and be- 

 sides, it has also two very large openings, the 

 Lech and the Waal, below Rotterdam, by which 

 it empties itself abundantly. 



Be this as it will, nothing is more common in 

 sultry and sandy deserts, than rivers being thus 

 either lost in the sands, or entirely dried up by 

 the sun. And hence we see, that under the Line 

 the small rivers are but few j for such little 

 streams as are common in Europe, and which 

 with us receive the name of rivers, would quickly 

 evaporate in those parching and extensive deserts. 

 It is even confidently asserted, that the great 

 river Niger is thus lost before it reaches the 

 ocean ; and that its supposed months, the Gambia 

 and the Senegal, are distinct rivers, that come a 

 vast way from the interior parts of the country. 

 It thus appears that the rivers under the Line are 

 large ; but it is otherwise at the Poles,* where 

 they must necessarily be small. In that desolate 

 region, as the mountains are covered with per- 

 petual ice, which melts but little, or not at all, 

 the springs and rivulets are furnished with a very 

 small supply. Here, therefore, man and beast 

 would perish, and die for thirst, if Providence 

 had not ordered, that in the hardest winter thaws 

 should intervene* which deposit a small quantity 

 of snow-water in pools under the ice ; and from 

 this source the wretched inhabitants drain a scanty 

 beverage. 



* Crantz's History of Greenland, vol. i. p. 41. 



