TRIPOLY TO BENGAZI. 155 In traversing this part of the Syrtis, Signor Della Celia discovered a square column of tolerable height and placed upon a pedestal.

It was composed, he says, of sandstone, but so corroded by time that the characters which entirely covered its four sides had become altogether unintelligible. An hour afterwards he arrived at a second, and, after a similar interval, at a third of these erections, all equally covered with waiting and so much decayed that, what with the little time which he had at his command, and the state of ruin in which the pillars were found, he could not succeed in putting together a single word of their inscriptions. “ Opposite to the first of these columns” (he adds) “ on the part next the sea, rise the remains of a tower surmounted with a cupola, and this spot is called Elbenia*.”

The Doctor confesses himself at a loss to decide for what purpose these pillars could have been erected ; but suggests that, supposing Zdffran to be Aspis, the ancient tower with a cupola which is near it, and, “ as Strabo says, to Aspis,” must inevitably be the Tvyog, or tower named Euphrantas of that geographer. From this conclusion he is induced to suspect that, as the tower of Euphrantas was the boundary of the Cyrenaic and Carthaginian territory under the Ptolemies, the three pillars above mentioned were erected to mark the limits of those countries, as well as to record other matters which (he says) were usually engraved by the ancients on objects of this nature.

Finding his courage rise at this happy coincidence of ancient with * Viaggio da Tripoli, &c., p. 77, 78.

X 2