Brooklet

Vast forests have disappeared from mountain spurs and ridges;[…] rivers famous in history and song have shrunk to humble brooklets; […]

There was a very light off-shore wind and scarcely any breakers, so that the approach to the shore was continued without finding bottom; yet though we were already quite close, we saw no indication of any indention in the coast from which even a tiny brooklet might issue, and certainly no mouth of a large river such as this must necessarily be to freshen the ocean even two hundred yards from shore.