which the gulf has in modern charts been made to terminate, we saw
a wide extent of coast, sweeping due east and west, with as little
variation as possible; and in the place of the numerous ports and
sinuosities which appeared in the maps before us, we saw a shore
but very slightly indented, which offered no possible security to
vessels of any description.
The chart ascribed to Ptolemy is the only one we are acquainted
with which approaches to something like the actual form of the coast;
and every step which modem geographers have receded from this
outline has been a step farther from the truth.
I t is difficult to say on what authorities the narrow inlet was
originally introduced which terminates the gulf in the charts above
mentioned; unless, indeed, the terms which have been used by
ancient geographers, in describing this part of the Greater Syrtis,
may be supposed to have occasioned the idea. The castle of Auto-
mala is mentioned by Strabo as situated in the innermost recess of
the gulf*. And Pliny speaks of the coast inhabited by the Loto-
phagi (which he places in the Greater Syrtis) as being equally in the
innermost part of the bayf. I t may be possible that these terms
have induced the more recent geographers to consider the gulf as
terminating in an inlet, and to hazard, on their authority, the introduction
of that which is now in question in the absence of any accurate
survey. I f such meaning can be supposed to have been extracted
from the term use4 by Strabo, his authority might certainly
* ISgu(M>0» x a r x to» ¡ u r / p i ro u x o Km v v m l o r— L ib . am i. p . 8 3 6 .
In intimo sinu fuit ora Lotophagon, &c.—Nat. Hist. lib. v. cap. 5.
have been safely relied upon by those who employed it on this occasion
without any reproach to their caution; since this geographer
himself visited the coast in a vessel, and may therefore be supposed
to have seen what he described. However this may be, we can
positively assert that no inlet whatever exists in the Gulf of Syrtis^
and that the direction of the coast at the bottom of the gulf is, as
nearly as possible, due east and west for a whole day’s journey together
; turning afterwards to the northward so slightly, that this difference
is scarcely perceptible to the eye. A large tract of quick
sand is also laid down by many in this part of the Gulf of Syrtis;
but we have traversed the sand and the sand-hills which are found
here, on horseback, in almost every direction, and may safely affirm
that they afford as good a footing as any dry sand or sand heaps can
be supposed to present. I f any other authority may be acceptable
in proof of the extreme dryness of the sand in this neighbourhood,
we have only to cite that of Doctor Della Celia to put everything like
scepticism on this point at rest. “ Woe be to us,” exclaims this gentleman,
(in describing the sandy tract here alluded to) “ if a sirocco,
or southerly wind, had unhappily overtaken us in this place, the
whole army would have been buried beneath the sands which the
action of the winds here raised up in waves no less formidable than
those of the seal” Now if anything like moisture had really existed
in the formidable particles which caused the Doctor such alarm, he
might have looked in defiance at every point of the compass, without
anticipating, with so much well-described horror, the fatal consequences
which would have resulted to himself and the whole army
had the wind been unfortunately to the southward.