JOURNEY FROM 
not having met with a similar accident long before they arrived at 
that point ; for this misfortune might assuredly have happened with 
equal probability before they set out on their journey to the south- 
ward, if the whole of the country, as we are informed by the Doctor, 
consisted of nothing else, from the desert to the sea, but the formi- 
dable red sand which at last put an end to them. The fact is, how- 
ever, that the “ ampia depressione” which is stated by Signor Della Celia 
to exist between the bottom of the gulf and the great desert, is un- 
fortunately interrupted by a chain of hills, a httle inland, of at least 
four or five hundred feet in height ; and we will venture to assert 
that, in the whole of the tract which has here been described by the 
Doctor, there is no part where high land does not intervene between 
the sand-hills and the desert alluded to. We are sorry to place so 
substantial an impediment in the way of the northerly wind, which 
the Doctor imagines could not go to the southward to gain its 
equilibrium if such a bar were placed in its route ; but if the whole 
country from the sea to the Niger were never again to be refreshed 
with this desirable breeze, we must still be obliged to leave our hills 
where we saw them in spite of so severe a misfortune. In stating 
that the level supposed to exist between the bottom of the Gulf of 
Syrtis and the great desert is not uninterrupted by hills, we must 
also observe that these hills are not of sand, and that a great 
portion of marshy and stony land is mingled with the sand which 
the Doctor states to be exclusively found there. We must at the 
same time remark, that the only part where the sand is red is 
in the neighbourhood of the sulphur mines; and this pecu- 
