504 MERGE TO GYRENE.

A similar disappointment was experienced by Captain Smyth, who was induced, from the report of the Sultan of Fezzan, an eye-witness of the scene he described, to undertake a journey to Ghirza ; and as he has obligingly favoured us with the details of it, we submit them to the inspection of the reader in the form in which they were extracted from his private journal.

“ During the time I was excavating amongst the ruins of Leptis Magna, the Arab Sheiks who visited my tent frequently remarked that I should have a better chance of finding good sculpture in the interior, and made many vague observations on the subject, to which amongst other very curious accounts relating to the same place, he told me a remarkable cix-cumstance to the great discredit and even confutation of all that had been so positively advanced with regard to the petrified bodies of men, children, and other animals. Some of the J anizaries who, in collecting the tribute, travel over every year one part or other of this district of Ras Sem, promised him that, as an adult pei'son would be too heavy and burdensome, they would undertake, for a certain number of dollars, to bi’ing him from thence the body of a little child. After a great many pretended difficulties, delays, and disappointments, they produced at length a little Cupid, which they had found, as he learnt afterwards, among the ruins of Leptis ; and to conceal the deceit, thev broke off the quiver and some other of the distinguishing characteristics of that deity.

“ M. Le Maire’s inquiries (he continues), which we find were supported by the promise and performance of great rewards, have brought nothing further to light. He could never learn, after sending a number of persons expi-essly, and at a great exjoense, to make discoveries, that any traces of walls or buildings, animals, or utensils, were ever to be seen within the verge of these pretended petrifactions. The same account he heard from a Sicilian renegado, who attended him as Janissary while in Egypt, and assured him that he had been several times at Ras Sem ; and also from another Sicilian renegado, whom the Bashaw of Tripoly had appointed Bey or Viceroy of the province of Derna, where Ras Sem M'as immediately under his jurisdiction.”