Ras Sem is five long days journey south from Bengazi; it has no water, except a spring very disagreeable to the taste, that appears to be impregnated with alum, and this has given it the name it bears of Ras Sem, or the Fountain of Poison, from its bitterness. The whole remains here consist in the ruins of a tower or fortification, that seems to be a work full as late as the time of the Vandals. How or what use they made of this water I cannot possibly guess; they had no other at the distance of two days journey. I was not fortunate enough to discover the petrified men and horses, the women at the churn, the little children, the cats, the dogs, and the mice, which his Barbarian excellency assured Sir Hans Sloane existed there: Yet, in vindication of his Excellency, I must say, that though he propagated, yet he did not invent this falsehood; the Arabs who conducted me maintained the same stories to be true, till I was within two hours of the place, where I found them to be false. I saw indeed mice[43], as they are called, of a very extraordinary kind, having nothing of petrifaction about them, but agile and active, so to partake as much of the bird as the beast. Approaching now the sea-coast I came to Ptolometa, the ancient Ptolemais[44], the work of Ptolemy Philadelphus, the walls and gates of which city are still entire. There is a prodigious number of Greek inscriptions, but there remain only a few columns of the portico, and an Ionic temple, in the first manner of executing that order; and therefore, slight as the remains are, they are treasures in the history of architecture which are worthy to be preserved. These are in the King’s collection, with all the parts that could be recovered. Here I met a small Greek junk belonging to Lampedosa, a little island near Crete, which had been unloading corn, and was now ready to sail. At the same time the Arabs of Ptolometa told me, that the Welled Ali, a powerful tribe that occupy the whole country between that place and Alexandria, were at war among themselves, and had plundered the caravan of Morocco, of which I have already spoken, and that the pilgrims composing it had mostly perished, having been scattered in the desert without water; that a great famine had been at Derna, the neighbouring town, to which I intended to go; that a plague had followed, and the town, which is divided into upper and lower, was engaged in a civil war. This torrent of ill news was irresistible, and was of a kind I did not propose to wrestle with; besides, there was nothing, as far as I knew, that merited the risk. I resolved, therefore, to fly from this inhospitable coast, and save to the public, at least, that knowledge and entertainment I had acquired for them.