3i4 JOURNEY FROM The anticipation of this premature burial was occasioned by the passage of Signor Della Celia and the army over a long range of sand-hills thrown up on the beach in this neighbourhood ; and which are supposed by the Doctor to have been blown there from the Great Desert to the southward. Of this latter circumstance we have certainly some doubt ; and can more readily imagine the “ seven hours and a half of real misery” endured by our traveller, “ under the influence of a burning sun,” in passing the sand-hills here mentioned, than we can suppose these unwelcome impediments themselves to have travelled from the desert in the interior. For all the sand-hills which encumber the beach in these parts, as well as all others which we recollect to have seen in the Syrtis, are, in our opinion, blown up from the beach itself, and not from the desert to the southward.

The tract of country, at the same time, which intervenes between these sand-hills and the desert is perfectly clear from any encumbrance of the kind; which could scarcely be the case if the masses on the beach had passed over it in their passage from the Sahara ; but Signor Della CeUa is further confirmed in his opinion by the circumstance of his not having been able to perceive, though he looked, he says, very attentively, any chain of high land in the interior, between the sand-hills which he mentions and the desert*.

* Ho pure fatto attenzione in tutti questi giorni se scorgera, anche in distanza, alcuna schiera di monti che da ponente si protendesse al levante, onde riconoscere se la giogaiadeir Atlante realmentesi prolonga ne’ monti della Cirenaica, o bensi se rimpetto al Golfo della Gran Sirte fosse interrotta. Ma nulla ho osservato che possa confermare questa prolungazione. (P. 91), Ital. edition.