212 
JOURNEY FROM 
which the gulf has in modern charts been made to terminate, we saw 
a wide extent of coast, sweeping due east and west, with as little 
variation as possible ; and in the place of the numerous ports and 
sinuosities which appeared in the maps before us, we saw a shore 
but very slightly indented, which offered no possible security to 
vessels of any description. 
The chart ascribed to Ptolemy is the only one we are acquainted 
with which approaches to something like the actual form of the coast ; 
and every step which modern geographers have receded from this 
outline has been a step farther from the truth. 
It is difficult to say on what authorities the narrow inlet was 
originally introduced which terminates the gulf in the charts above 
mentioned ; unless, indeed, the terms which have been used by 
ancient geographers, in describing this part of the Greater Syrtis, 
may be supposed to have occasioned the idea. The castle of Auto- 
mala is mentioned by Strabo as situated in the innermost recess of 
the gulf*. And Pliny speaks of the coast inhabited by the Loto- 
phagi (which he places in the Greater Syrtis) as being equally in the 
innermost part of the bayf. It may be possible that these terms 
have induced the more recent geographers to consider the gulf as 
terminating in an inlet, and to hazard, on their authority, the intro- 
duction of that which is now in question in the absence of any accu- 
rate survey. If such meaning can be supposed to have been ex- 
tracted from the term used by Strabo, his authority might certainly 
* IS|y/AEV 0 V Kara. Tov Tov mXhov iraiflos' — Lib. xvii. p. 836. 
f In intimo sinu fuit ora Lotophagon, &c. — Nat. Hist. lib. v. cap. 5. 
