MERGE TO GYRENE. 
503 
same bluish colour Here we have evidently the description of an 
ancient city, with its buildings and statues, converted by the fertile 
imagination of the Arabs, and other ignorant spectators of its 
remains, into the fancied semblances mentioned. It is probable that 
one of the cities of the Pentapohs, Gyrene perhaps, as having most 
statues, was the petrified city in question ; and we may venture to 
say that there is scarcely an individual who has travelled in 
Mahometan countries who has not been induced to take journies of 
inquiry on the authority of similar fictions. Happy are they who find 
the least resemblance between the description which they have heard 
and the reality ! — for it often occurs that amplification and hyperbole 
have less to do in such accounts than pure invention. Shaw was 
encouraged, as he himself informs us, to undertake a very tedious 
and dangerous journey to Hamam Meskouteen in Numidia upon 
the authority of Arab reports ; he had been assured, with the most 
solemn asseverations, that a number of tents had been seen there, 
with cattle of different kinds, converted into stone. On arriving, 
however, at the place, he had the mortification of finding that all the 
accounts which he had heard were idle and fictitious, without the 
least foundation, unless in the wild and extravagant brains of his 
informers. “ Neither (he continues) will the reports concerning the 
petrified bodies at Kas Sem deserve any greater regard or credibility, 
as will appear from the following relation f.” 
* See Shaw’s Travels in Barbary vol. ii. p. 286. 
•f “ About forty years ago, when M. Le Maire was French consul at Tripoly, he made 
great inquiries, by order of the French court, into the truth of this report; and 
