“From the authorities which we shall presently adduce, we can suppose no other than that this Syrtis” (the Gulf of the Lesser Syrtis) “did once enter much deeper into the land; and that it even formed a junction with the Lake Lowdeah within it—the Tritonis Palus of the ancients. Otherwise we must not only reject the reports of Herodotus and Ptolemy, but that of Scylax also, the writer of a periplus, and who ought to have known the truth.” Again, after a learned and ingenious discussion—“In effect the ancients, as Dr. Shaw justly observes (p. 213), seem to have described this quarter from report, or uncertain information only[22]; and therefore we can hardly expect consistent, much more critical, descriptions. They appear, however, to have furnished us with very good grounds for believing that the Syrtis and Lake Tritonis communicated in former times; and that the communication continued even to the time of Ptolemy. We think it equally probable that the river Triton flowed into the lake, and that the island called by some Triton, by Herodotus, Phla, together with the temple of Minerva, (in which the Triton is said to have deposited Jason’s tripod) was situated near the mouth of it: moreover, that the island in question is now a part of the sandy plain in which the rivulet of Hammah, the supposed river of Triton, loses itself. For it appears to us that the difference between the present state of things, at this place, and the ancient description of the lake and Syrtis, may be reconciled, by merely adverting to the changes that have taken place on other sandy shores; and more particularly at the head of a gulf where the tide exerts its greatest power of casting up the sand to a higher point. That which has happened at the head of the Red Sea may be adduced in point; and, as the shore of the Syrtis is much flatter than the other, the operation has probably gone on with greater rapidity.” Lucan (as Major Rennell has justly observed) “appears to believe that the bottom of the Syrtis” (that is, the Greater Syrtis) “was growing firmer, and the water shallower; and surmises that it may hereafter become dry and solid.” “What changes” (he continues), “in point of form and extent, they may have undergone, or if any, we know not: but it is certain they have hitherto preserved their original properties.” We insert below the lines of Lucan alluded to, from Rowe’s translation[23].