212 JOURNEY FROM 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 modern geographers have receded from this outline has been a step farther from the truth.

It 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 Automala is mentioned by Strabo as situated in the innermost recess of the gulf*. And Pliny speaks of the coast inhabited by the Lotophagi (which he places in the Greater Syrtis) as being equally in the innermost part of the bayf. It 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. If such meaning can be supposed to have been extracted from the term used by Strabo, his authority might certainly * IS|y/AEV0V Kara. Tov Tov mXhov iraiflos' — Lib. xvii. p. 836. f In intimo sinu fuit ora Lotophagon, &c. — Nat. Hist. lib. v. cap. 5.