The immediate banks of the river would have, perhaps, been fringed with verdure, but the influence of the irrigation would have extended no farther than the water itself could have reached, by percolation through the sand.

But the flow of the water is not thus uniform and steady.

In a certain season of the year the rains are incessant, and they descend with such abundance and profusion as almost to inundate the districts where they fall.

Immense torrents stream down the mountain sides; the valleys are deluged; plains turn into morasses, and morasses into lakes.

In a word, the country becomes half submerged, and the accumulated mass of waters would rush with great force and violence down the central valley of the desert, which forms their only outlet, if the passage were narrow, and if it made any considerable descent in its course to the sea.