About Two Miles From The Town To The Southward, It Runs Between Two High Mountains, Apparently As High As The Mountains Which Adams Saw In Barbary; Here The River Is About Half A Mile Wide.

The water of La Mar Zarah is rather brackish, but is commonly drunk by the natives, there not being, according to the report of Adams, any wells at Timbuctoo.

It must be remarked in this place, that at the time when Adams related the narrative of his residence in Africa, and particularly in the city of Timbuctoo, a very considerable degree of distrust was attached to it; and in order to put the veracity of Adams to a decisive test, the publication of his adventures was delayed until the arrival of Mr. Dupuis, then the British vice-consul at Mogadore, to whose interference Adams acknowledged himself indebted for his ransom, and who, on account of his long residence in Africa, and his intimate acquaintance with the manners and customs of the natives, was fully competent to the detection of any imposition which it might be the intention of Adams to practise upon those, who undertook the publication of his adventures. From this severe ordeal Adams came out fully clear of any intention to impose, and the principal points of his narrative were corroborated by the knowledge and experience of Mr. Dupuis. Thus that gentleman, in allusion to the description which Adams gave of La Mar Zarah, mentions that the Spanish geographer Marmol, who describes himself to have spent twenty years of warfare and slavery in Africa, about the middle of the sixteenth century, mentions the river La-ha-mar as a branch of the Niger, having muddy and unpalatable waters.

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