TRIPOLY TO BENGAZI. 223 plain of this description in the bottom of the Syrtis ; and, although there is no river, there are certainly mountains, if hills of sohd stone, of from four to six hundred feet in height, may be entitled to that distinction.

It is true that the chain of hills at the bottom of the gulf run in an east and westerly direction, and might not, on that account, be well calculated for objects by which limits in the same direction might be ascertained ; but the account given by Sallust would lead us to imagine (as it seems to have done Signor Della Celia) that the place was without any inequalities of this nature whatever.

Again, if it be true that Cato marched his army over the sandhills which appear to have been so laboriously traversed by the army which the doctor accompanied, it was certainly no very good proof of the patriot’s generalship ; for, with the exception of one place, where the passage is occasionally impeded by marshy ground, reaching close up to the foot of the sand-hills on the beach, there could have been no occasion for crossing the sand at all, since the country to the southward of it is clear*. The same may be said of the whole tract of country in general, where sand-hills are found in the Syrtis and Cyrenaica ; the sand-heaps being confined to the beach alone, and not overspreading the whole face of the soil.

* The water is, however, more frequently found among the sand on the beach than elsewhere ; but it scarcely seems necessary that the whole extent of the sand-hills should be traversed by the army on this account. Their guides must have known where the water was to be found, without the necessity of traversing so many miles of sand-heaps in search of it.