3i4 
JOURNEY FROM 
The anticipation of this premature burial was occasioned by the 
passage of Signor Della Celia and the army over a long range of 
sand-hills thrown up on the beach in this neighbourhood ; and 
which are supposed by the Doctor to have been blown there from 
the Great Desert to the southward. Of this latter circumstance 
we have certainly some doubt ; and can more readily imagine 
the “ seven hours and a half of real misery” endured by our 
traveller, “ under the influence of a burning sun,” in passing the 
sand-hills here mentioned, than we can suppose these unwelcome 
impediments themselves to have travelled from the desert in the 
interior. For all the sand-hills which encumber the beach in these 
parts, as well as all others which we recollect to have seen in the 
Syrtis, are, in our opinion, blown up from the beach itself, and not 
from the desert to the southward. 
The tract of country, at the same time, which intervenes between 
these sand-hills and the desert is perfectly clear from any encum- 
brance of the kind; which could scarcely be the case if the masses 
on the beach had passed over it in their passage from the Sahara ; 
but Signor Della CeUa is further confirmed in his opinion by the 
circumstance of his not having been able to perceive, though he 
looked, he says, very attentively, any chain of high land in the inte- 
rior, between the sand-hills which he mentions and the desert*. 
* Ho pure fatto attenzione in tutti questi giorni se scorgera, anche in distanza, 
alcuna schiera di monti che da ponente si protendesse al levante, onde riconoscere se la 
giogaiadeir Atlante realmentesi prolonga ne’ monti della Cirenaica, o bensi se rimpetto 
al Golfo della Gran Sirte fosse interrotta. Ma nulla ho osservato che possa confermare 
questa prolungazione. (P. 91), Ital. edition. 
