CATARACTS AND INUNDATIONS. 19 



This great river is extremely rapid at its mouth, which is attributed 

 to so large a body of water being confined within so narrow a chan. 

 nel, the mouth of the river being only half a league over, and choaked 

 up by a bar, which renders the passage exceedingly difficult and dan- 

 gerous, especially in the rainy season, when the prodigious swell of 

 the river, and the south-west winds, opposed to its rapid course, raise 

 waves of so prodigious a height at the bar, that their clashing re. 

 sembles the shock of mountains, and are said to be so furious as to 

 dash in pieces the stoutest ships : yet, according to Labat, the worst 

 season, with respect to commerce, is in September and November, 

 when the winds blowing northerly, exclude all navigation, even of 

 the smallest boats. 



This bar is doubly dangerous, not only on account of the violence 

 of the waves, but of the shallowness of the water, and the shifting of 

 the bar after floods and heavy rains, by which the channels are lost, 

 and new soundings become necessary to discover them. The Senegal 

 would indeed be quite shut up were it not for one channel, four 

 hundred yards broad, and two fathoms deep, that has long kept 

 its present direction. The most proper time for crossing the bar is 

 from March to September, when the winds are variable, and the bar 

 continues fixed till the ensuing rainy season. 



When the bar is crossed, a smooth and gently.gliding river is en- 

 tered, which is four fathoms deep. 



These rjvers have likewise their inundations, which overspread the 

 whole flat country of Nigritia. They begin and cease much about the 

 same time as the Nile overflows, but no such salutary effects are ex- 

 perienced here as in Egypt ; for, instead of health and plenty, dis- 

 eases, famine, and death, follow in their train. The soil thrown up 

 by the Senegal, becomes unavailing to any agricultural purposes, 

 from the indolence of the savage wanderers who occupy its banks, 

 and the country lying unfilled, from its luxuriance produces great 

 abundance of rank and noxious herbage, and furnishes .^convenient, 

 repository for venomous insects and reptiles, as well as for beasts of 

 prey. When the waters of these rivers retire into their channels 

 the humidity and heat which prevail spread a pestilential taint, whilst 

 the carcases of vast numbers of animals, which the inundation had 

 swept away, become putrid, and spread around a loathsome and 

 baneful stench, Even the vegetation itself is charged with destruc- 



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