These new efforts soon exhausted him, and he was forced to sit down and try to recover himself. As he sat there gasping, there seemed to be a more intense warmth in the air, a dry, torrid heat, a suffocating closeness, which was, far worse than it had been yet. He felt that under these circumstances his progress would be small indeed. He had only one thought now, and that was, to recover from his heat and exhaustion; and to do this he knew of only one thing, which was--a plunge in the water. Tearing off his clothes now, he flung himself in the water, and felt once more its reviving influence. At this moment a new idea occurred to him, which filled him again with hope. It was, that he should remain in the river, and go on as he was, carrying his clothes with him. At this rate his progress would be far more rapid than it had just been; and he would be far less liable to feel fatigue. Acting upon this suggestion, he rolled his clothes up into as small a bundle as possible, but kept his boots on his feet, so as to walk without difficulty over the sharp sticks or stones that he might encounter; and now, slinging his bundle behind his back, he went on, walking near one of the banks, in water that was about up to his waist. His progress was certainly not very fast; but the plan was highly satisfactory, since he no longer suffered so much from that intense exhaustion to which he had been subject while forcing his way through the tangled brushwood. But at length he found himself assailed by myriads of mosquitos, and this infliction became so intolerable that he had to go into the deeper water of the mid-channel. Here, however, his progress was slow, and carrying his bundle was a great trouble.