not having met with a similar accident long before they arrived at
that point; for this misfortune might assuredly have happened with
equal probability before they set out on their journey to the southward,
if the whole of the country, as we are informed by the Doctor,
consisted of nothing else, from the desert to the sea, but the formidable
red sand which at last put an end to them. The fact is, however,
that the “ampia depressione” which is stated by Signor Della Celia
to exist between the bottom of the gulf and the great desert, is unfortunately
interrupted by a chain of hills, a little inland, of at least
four or five hundred feet in height; and we will venture to assert
that, in the whole of the tract which has here been described by the
Doctor, there is no part where high land does not intervene between
the sand-hills and the desert alluded to. We are sorry to place so
substantial an impediment in the way of the northerly wind, which
the Doctor imagines could not go to the southward to gain its
equilibrium if such a bar were placed in its route ; but if the whole
country from the sea to the Niger were never again to be refreshed
with this desirable breeze, we must still be obliged to leave our hills
where we saw them in spite of so severe a misfortune. In stating
that the level supposed to exist between the bottom of the Gulf of
Syrtis and the great desert is not uninterrupted by hills, we must
also observe that these hills are not of sand, and that a great
portion of marshy and stony land is mingled with the sand which
the Doctor states to be exclusively found there. We must at the
same time remark, that the only part where the sand is red is
in the neighbourhood of the sulphur mines; and this peculiarity
may be considered as wholly occasioned by the nature of
the soil where it is found. I t is besides of so fine a texture as to
partake more of the nature of dust than of desert sand, which is
neither so red nor so light. I t is not raised up in large heaps like
the sand on the beach, but scattered over the surface in little hillocks,
on which a scanty vegetation is occasionally observable. In fact this
substance has no resemblance whatever either to the sand on the
beach or to that of the' desert, and it ceases altogether with the soil
which occasions it. How Signor Della Celia could have confounded
it with the sand heaps thrown up on the beach we are at a loss to
imagine; for these are considerably whiter than the desert sand,
while the light powder in question is considerably redder. Besides,
the sand-hills continue long after this substance has ceased
to appear; and in the parts where they are found in the
greatest masses there is not a particle of red sand to be seen. At
the same time that We differ on this point with Signor Della Celia,
we must also confess that his conjecture with respect to the exten-
sion of the gulf to the southward is not better founded than his
remarks on the extension of the sand. For it is somewhat remarks
ble, that while the shape of the bottom of the gulf has been so very
incorrectly laid down in modern charts as it is found to have been,
the latitude which has been assigned to it by the same authorities
is as near the truth as possible ; and we may safely affirm that the
most southern part of the Gulf of Syrtis does not approach at all
nearer to the desert than it is made to do in the charts alluded to by
Signor Della Celia, notwithstanding the confidence with which the