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[2]. 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 bay[3]. 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 have been safely relied upon by those who employed it on this occasion without any reproach to their caution; since this geographer himself visited the coast in a vessel, and may therefore be supposed to have seen what he described. However this may be, we can positively assert that no inlet whatever exists in the Gulf of Syrtis; and that the direction of the coast at the bottom of the gulf is, as nearly as possible, due east and west for a whole day’s journey together; turning afterwards to the northward so slightly, that this difference is scarcely perceptible to the eye. A large tract of quick sand is also laid down by many in this part of the Gulf of Syrtis; but we have traversed the sand and the sand-hills which are found here, on horseback, in almost every direction, and may safely affirm that they afford as good a footing as any dry sand or sand heaps can be supposed to present. If any other authority may be acceptable in proof of the extreme dryness of the sand in this neighbourhood, we have only to cite that of Doctor Della Cella to put everything like scepticism on this point at rest. “Woe be to us,” exclaims this gentleman, (in describing the sandy tract here alluded to) “if a sirocco, or southerly wind, had unhappily overtaken us in this place, the whole army would have been buried beneath the sands which the action of the winds here raised up in waves no less formidable than those of the sea!” Now if anything like moisture had really existed in the formidable particles which caused the Doctor such alarm, he might have looked in defiance at every point of the compass, without anticipating, with so much well-described horror, the fatal consequences which would have resulted to himself and the whole army, had the wind been unfortunately to the southward.