MERGE TO GYRENE. 503 same bluish colour Here we have evidently the description of an ancient city, with its buildings and statues, converted by the fertile imagination of the Arabs, and other ignorant spectators of its remains, into the fancied semblances mentioned. It is probable that one of the cities of the Pentapohs, Gyrene perhaps, as having most statues, was the petrified city in question ; and we may venture to say that there is scarcely an individual who has travelled in Mahometan countries who has not been induced to take journies of inquiry on the authority of similar fictions. Happy are they who find the least resemblance between the description which they have heard and the reality ! — for it often occurs that amplification and hyperbole have less to do in such accounts than pure invention. Shaw was encouraged, as he himself informs us, to undertake a very tedious and dangerous journey to Hamam Meskouteen in Numidia upon the authority of Arab reports ; he had been assured, with the most solemn asseverations, that a number of tents had been seen there, with cattle of different kinds, converted into stone. On arriving, however, at the place, he had the mortification of finding that all the accounts which he had heard were idle and fictitious, without the least foundation, unless in the wild and extravagant brains of his informers. “ Neither (he continues) will the reports concerning the petrified bodies at Kas Sem deserve any greater regard or credibility, as will appear from the following relation f.”

* See Shaw’s Travels in Barbary vol. ii. p. 286.

•f “ About forty years ago, when M. Le Maire was French consul at Tripoly, he made great inquiries, by order of the French court, into the truth of this report; and