504 
MERGE TO GYRENE. 
A similar disappointment was experienced by Captain Smyth, who 
was induced, from the report of the Sultan of Fezzan, an eye-witness 
of the scene he described, to undertake a journey to Ghirza ; and as 
he has obligingly favoured us with the details of it, we submit them to 
the inspection of the reader in the form in which they were extracted 
from his private journal. 
“ During the time I was excavating amongst the ruins of Leptis 
Magna, the Arab Sheiks who visited my tent frequently remarked 
that I should have a better chance of finding good sculpture in the 
interior, and made many vague observations on the subject, to which 
amongst other very curious accounts relating to the same place, he told me a remarkable 
cix-cumstance to the great discredit and even confutation of all that had been so positively 
advanced with regard to the petrified bodies of men, children, and other animals. Some 
of the J anizaries who, in collecting the tribute, travel over every year one part or other 
of this district of Ras Sem, promised him that, as an adult pei'son would be too heavy 
and burdensome, they would undertake, for a certain number of dollars, to bi’ing him 
from thence the body of a little child. After a great many pretended difficulties, delays, 
and disappointments, they produced at length a little Cupid, which they had found, as 
he learnt afterwards, among the ruins of Leptis ; and to conceal the deceit, thev broke 
off the quiver and some other of the distinguishing characteristics of that deity. 
“ M. Le Maire’s inquiries (he continues), which we find were supported by the promise 
and performance of great rewards, have brought nothing further to light. He could 
never learn, after sending a number of persons expi-essly, and at a great exjoense, to 
make discoveries, that any traces of walls or buildings, animals, or utensils, were ever to 
be seen within the verge of these pretended petrifactions. The same account he heard 
from a Sicilian renegado, who attended him as Janissary while in Egypt, and assured 
him that he had been several times at Ras Sem ; and also from another Sicilian rene- 
gado, whom the Bashaw of Tripoly had appointed Bey or Viceroy of the province of 
Derna, where Ras Sem M'as immediately under his jurisdiction.” 
