225 
Again, in the present Bay of Gabes, the Lesser Syrtis of the 
ancients, the tides are probably higher than in any other portion 
of the Mediterranean. Beyond this, there is no reason for con- 
sidering it more stormy than other parts of that sea. 
The Romans, however, had a different idea. They 
unanimously held that its navigation was the most dangerous 
within their knowledge,—dangerous for its terrible storms, and 
more especially dangerous for its quicksands. 
The Aineid of Virgil is in part an imitation of the Iliad, and 
in part of the Odyssey; and the route taken by Aineas in his 
wanderings is, in the main, that taken by Ulysses. Like Homer, 
Virgil brings his hero to the mouth of the Bay of Triton, the 
country of the Lotos-eaters ; but, strange to say, unlike Homer, he 
represents his hero as there wrecked on a stormy coast, whose 
inhabitants were no longer the kindly Lotos-eaters, who received 
Ulysses and his crew, but savage and inhospitable to strangers, 
In this, doubtless, Virgil reflects the ideas and knowledge of his 
own age ; and this divergence between the two poems can be only 
explained by considering what we know must have been the con- 
_ dition of the Bay of Triton in his time. It still formed a part, and 
_ probably the most frequented part, of the Lesser Syrtis. The desic- 
cation of the gulf we have seen had been for some time in process, 
and, presuming that the Saharian Sea was already in the main dried 
_ up, the Bay of Triton, in many places shallow and with broad sandy 
_ shores, must frequently have been lashed with typhoons, taking 
_ their rise, as they do now, in the heated regions of the Sahara, and 
_ like the hurricanes of the Gulf of Mexico, destroying all before 
them. In a shallow, sandy sea, they would rouse huge waves, 
_ which would lash up the deep-lying sand, producing a wild turmoil 
_ of sea, and sand, and foam, and wind, such as we have on our own 
_ Goodwins, such as is graphically described by Virgil, and such as 
F even modern ships could hardly withstand. 
From the passages quoted, we may reasonably suppose that 
% it was about the time of the Christian era that the Bay of Triton 
_ began to be finally separated from the Mediterranean. There 
- would then commence the process of desiccation. The neigh- 
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