impostors, similar to the fakirs of India, who play all sorts of frantic tricks. The profession is hereditary, and passes from father to son, and is so profitable, that the regency of Tripoli swarms with these lazy impostors.

The country near the sea-coast continues flat the whole way between Tagiura and Lebida, the Leptis Magna of the Romans, and Neapolis of the Greeks. It is divested of trees, but well clothed with grass; and being watered by rills, descending from the Gorian ridge of mountains, which runs behind Tripoli, parallel to the coast, here and there exhibits the appearance of extensive green meadows. These plains are named Turot. The water in the deep channels, at the time the Doctor passed, was nearly absorbed, and the little within them, as well as that which was procured near the shore from wells excavated in the sandstone rock, had a brackish and disagreeable taste. The rocky cliffs which skirted the plain were covered with wild vines, yielding grapes of an excellent flavour. Here the Bey spent a day in hawking, a diversion which our traveller supposes was carried by the Moors into Spain, and from thence spread into other parts of Europe.

On the morning of the 14th of February, at a little before sunrise, the thermometer of Reaumur was down to 4° (Fahrenheit 41°), which the preceding day had been at 16° (Fahrenheit 68°) in the shade. This difference in the temperature is by no means, as DellaCella seems to suppose, peculiar to the coast of Barbary; it pervades all Africa, from the Pillars of Hercules to the Table Mountain at the Cape; and many times to a much more extraordinary degree than he mentions. These sudden changes are influenced by the numerous hills and beds of salt, probably every where found on the continent of Africa, and which were not unknown to the father of history.

At Lebida, 'undefinable ruins' are to be seen scattered over the surface, or half buried in the heaps of sand, which the united or opposing efforts of the sea and the winds have accumulated on this part of the coast. They consist of the remains of magnificent buildings, and dilapidated towers, and most beautiful columns of red granite thrown down, and fragments of all kinds of marble, among which were observed many of Parian, and of Pentelican, and also of oriental porphyry.' Here our traveller fell in with Captain Smyth of the British navy, who was employed in collecting specimens of these precious remains; but we cannot say that the masses of columns which this officer sent to England and which encumber the court-yard of the British Museum, at all correspond with the florid description of Signor Della-Cella, whom the reader must already have observed to be somewhat ambitious in

his

his language: they are, in fact, bad specimens of a bad era of Roman architecture; ill-proportioned Dorics,' as Bruce calls them, ' of the time of Aurelian.' The best columns which the ruins of Lebida afforded, were eight of granite, one of which was broken, and the other seven carried to France in the reign of Louis XIV.

At the distance of three hours journey beyond Lebida, the army crossed the bed of a river called Wadi-quaam, which our traveller conceives to be, and which probably is, the same that was known to the ancients as the Cynips. According to Herodotus, this river descended from the hills of the Graces, a branch of the Gorian chain. The remains of au aqueduct, supported on square pillars, suggested the probability of its having, in former days, supplied the city of Lebida with water. 'Vast,' says our author, 'and fertile beyond belief, is the plain which, after an hour's travelling from the Cynips, opens to the eastward, as far as Cape Mesurata.' This agrees with what we are told by Herodotus-that the territories of Cynips were equal in fertility to those about Babylon, and yielded one hundred fold. Here are three large villages, whose population consists entirely of Jews and Maraboots; the latter holding the former in a state of subjection little short of slavery. Traces of an ancient people are every where visible in the fragments which are stuck into the walls of the miserable modern hovels; and the Maraboots have, in many instances, profited by taking up their abode in the more substantial remains of the old towers or castles,

Near to the sea, and at the distance of eight hours on the western side of Mesurata, there appeared a sort of oasis rising out of the sands, in which were the vestiges of an ancient territory, to which the Moors gave the name of Orir. The remains of massy walls, and of houses, with fragments of mosaic pavements, and of marble, testify its having once been a city of some renown, and the site of it appears to agree with the Cisterné of Ptolemy, being at no great distance from Cape Trierium. From this place the whole line of coast appeared covered with a succession of sand hills; on approaching Mesurata, however, the country resumed all its beauty. It was here that the Awlopayo! lived, who are said to have subsisted altogether on the fruit of the lotus, now well known to be a species of the rhamnus, common throughout Africa, and accurately described by Dr. Shaw, Mungo Park, and others. The farinaceous pulp of the fruit affords now to multitudes, as it did in ancient times, a kind of bread; if left to ferment, and mixed with water, it yields a most refreshing beverage, which Herodotus calls wine. Extensive shrubberies of palin and olive inpede the progress of the traveller; but

the approach to the city is enlivened by the most delightful gardens, and fields cultivated with grain. The town itself consists of groups of miserable sheds, built with rubble stones and thatched with straw and palm leaves. The inhabitants subsist chiefly on the products of the soil; but they also manufacture for sale carpets of various colours, which are much in esteem for the fine quality of the wool, yielded by the sheep of this part of the country.

The Aga of Mesurata put himself under the orders of the Bey, with 500 horsemen and a proportionate number of camels; and the expedition, thus increased, entered upon a part of the journey peculiarly interesting from the notice which it excited among the classical writers of antiquity. The route lay along the western shore of the Greater Syrtis, that deep gulph so formidable to the ancient navigators of the Mediterranean, from its tremendous whirlpools, and rapid tides, its rocks and quicksands; but which in all probability will recede and vanish, like those of Scylla and Charybdis, before the enterprizing researches of the modern mariner. Passing Cape Trierium, whose name corresponds with its form, they found on its eastern extremity a chain of rocks which, running from north-west to south-east, forms a bay called Kasar-Hamed, where small vessels may find shelter. This is the only notice our traveller gives us of any part of the coast of the Syrtis. The road from this place led (at the distance of one or two miles inland) across a dreary and desert region, well calculated to inspire melancholy sensations. Mi sentii,' he says, stringere il cuore all'aspetto di queste tristissime solitudini, per le quali era forza l'avventurarsi.' The few plants scattered over the surface were all of unsightly forms, rough with spines, and of a meagre and shrivelled appearance. The doctor made a collection of them; but he does not seem to know much of botany, or indeed of any part of natural history: we are glad to find, however, that the fruits of his industry are placed in the hands of Professor Viviani, who intends to publish a specimen of the Flora Libyca.

After a few hours travelling, the sandy surface was changed for one of swamps and pools of water, sometimes so deep and muddy, that the horses could not proceed without great difficulty and danger. The heat was suffocating, the thermometer at 23° R. (Faht. 85) and that optical illusion, well known by the name of mirage, presented to the troops a lake so well defined by surrounding hills, that they began to scream with joy. We should have thought that this phenomenon could not have misled a native of Tripoly. The sea, on their left, was at the distance of two or three miles from the route; hid, however, from the sight by a conti nued line of lofty sand hills.

In coasting this western shore of the Syrtis, to the southward, their provisions became scarce, and it was deemed necessary, on approaching a place called Labey, to send out hunting-parties; they appear to have been successful, but the only game mentioned by Della-Cella is a species of gazelle or antelope, and a small wild bull of a dun colour, having a tail furnished with a tuft of black hair; an animal so swift as not to be taken without the utmost difficulty. We should be induced to suppose that he meant to describe the Gnoo, if we could be sure that this extraordinary animal inhabited the northern as well as the southern regions of Africa.

On the 26th February, at a station called Zaffran, the swamps and salt marshes had disappeared, and the surface became more solid for travelling, and more agreeable to the eye, presenting meadows enamelled with a beautiful species of ranunculus with a large white flower, which our author supposes to be the ranunculus asiaticus. Here also were wells of water, less salt and muddy than those to which they had been accustomed of late. No inhabitants, however, enlivened the face of the country; but from various indications, it was evident that the Bedouins, on discovering the approach of the Tripolitan army, had fled precipitately with their flocks and herds from the tyranny of the merciless marauders. Proceeding along the shore, they came, on the 27th, to a lofty square column of sandstone, so much corroded by time, that the characters, which entirely covered the four faces, were quite indistinct; an hour's travelling beyond this brought them to a second, and, at an equal interval, to a third covered in the same manner. Our traveller could not, he says, make out one word of these inscriptions; this is very possible; but he might perhaps have told us in what language or, at least, in what characters they were written. What the object of these columns may have been, and what the ancient name of their site, he pretends not to determine, but suggests that Zaffran may be the Aspis of Strabo and Ptolemy; if so, it is not improbable that they may have served as land-marks for the port of that name, which was situated on the western shore of the Syrtis. Near the first pillar, towards the shore, was a ruined tower, surmounted by a cupola, which, if the author's supposition be correct as to the port, would answer to the Eufranta of Strabo. We think it, however, a little fanciful to suppose this part of the coast to be the Carace of Strabo, where the Carthaginians smuggled the silphium of the Cyreneans in exchange for wine; and not a little so, to imagine the three columns to have marked the division between Carthage and Cyrene, because it is well known that the confines of these two states were the Philænean altars, at the head of the great gulf of Syrtis.

On the 28th the expedition had again to encounter the salt marshes, and to travel for ten hours along the edge of a swamp, about half a mile in width; at the head of which was a little rising ground, called Nehim; to which some wells of water, tolerably good, had attracted a tribe of Bedouins, who received the Moors with every mark of hospitality, offering them freely their cattle and their camels; and here,' says Della-Cella, 'we employed two days in plundering our kind hosts.' Directing their course hence, a little easterly, the swamps, after some hours, were succeeded by high sand-hills, the soil between which was so loose and cavernous, from the innumerable burrows of moles, rabbits and jerboas, that the horses and camels were in danger of breaking their own legs and the necks of their riders at every step. Flights of locusts covered the sun like a black cloud. At Geria, their next encampment, the water failed them, in consequence of which, the cattle, the horses and camels, were ready to die of thirst, and the troops were reduced to the last extremity. Ma fa sorpresa,' says our traveller, quanto la dottrina del fatalismo, profondamente radicata nell'animo de' questi Musulmani, li renda di una stupida cecitá sopra i perigli che li circondano.'

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The expedition had now approached that point in its route which the prolongation of the Syrtis forms to the southward, and which is now considered as the boundary between Tripoli and the province of Bengazi, as it was in ancient times between Carthage and Cyrene. This too is an interesting point in geography, as being the portal which may be said to connect the Mediterranean with the great internal desert of Africa. Their route lay over a surface strewed with a fine-grained movable red-coloured sand, gradually becoming deeper, till at last they found themselves enveloped in a tract of sand-hills, which obstructed the view and impeded their march; Lamentable,' says our author, would it have been for us, if the south-east or the south wind had sprung up in this part of our journey; the whole army must have been buried under these sands which the violence of the wind agitates into waves rolling like those of the sea.' It took them six hours to pass this perilous spot, when they reached a village called Barga, where the soil exhibited something like verdure, and a part of the surface was enamelled with flowers.

Della-Cella confirms the assertion of Sallust that neither river nor mountain marks the confines of the Cyreneans and Carthaginians; an absence of well-defined limits that was the occasion of constant disputes between the two nations. It was on this account that an agreement was made between them, that, at a fixed time, two persons should set out from each of the two capitals,