An hour’s hard pull brought us close to the long island. A wild, uninhabited place it looked as we approached it, all blown sand in dunes and hillocks overgrown with coarse rank tussock and esparto. Even before we reached the sandy shore, fragments of walls and broken tiles in abundance could be seen through the pellucid water, half-buried in the soft, sandy bottom; and when I landed upon the beach of pure sand some twenty feet or more wide, a glance sufficed to show that this was the site of a place where many people had dwelt in the long ago. A long sand dune, some fifteen feet high, runs parallel with the sea, and in the face of this dune strong walls, doorways, and ruins of all sorts are embedded. The sand in many places has been removed sufficiently to uncover entire rooms and passages, and the whole beach below is literally covered with broken tiles, apparently Roman, which presumably formed the roofs of the ruined dwellings. The walls are usually formed of undressed stones, with some rubble cement almost as hard, the courses, and sometimes corners, being composed of coarse red bricks or tiles eighteen inches long by twelve broad and two thick. Mounting the top of the dune I saw beneath me the houses that at various times had been excavated, and partially cleared of sand by the successive adventurers, who, for the sake of profit or curiosity, have undertaken the work. It has been done unsystematically and unscientifically; but in the three-quarters of a century or so that have elapsed since renewed interest has been displayed in the place, an immense number of Roman coins, some of the latest period of the domination, have been found; and numerous relics of Roman, and, as I believe, of a much earlier civilisation have also been discovered, many of the objects being now in the Belem museum. Mr. Oswald Crawford wrote an amusing account of a visit he paid to the place about thirty years ago, and advanced some attractive theories with regard to it; but apparently the excavations that have taken place since his time must have been considerable, as some of the most significant features noticed by me were presumably not uncovered when he was there, as he does not mention them.