TRIPOLY TO BENGAZI. 
217 
'liarity may be considered as wholly occasioned by the nature of 
the soil where it is found. It is besides of so fine a texture as to 
partake more of the nature of dust than of desert sand, which is 
neither so red nor so light. It is not raised up in large heaps like 
the sand on the beach, but scattered over the surface in little hillocks, 
on which a scanty vegetation is occasionally observable. In fact this 
substance has no resemblance whatever either to the sand on the 
beach or to that of the desert, and it ceases altogether with the soil 
which occasions it. How^ Signor Della Celia could have confounded 
it with the sand heaps thrown up on the beach w^e are at a loss to 
imagine; for these are considerably whiter than the desert sand, 
while the light powxler in question is considerably redder. Be- 
sides, the sand-hills continue long after this substance has ceased 
to appear; and in the parts where they are found in the 
greatest masses there is not a particle of red sand to be seen. At 
the same time that we differ on this point with Signor Della CeUa, 
we must also confess that his conjecture with respect to the exten- 
sion of the gulf to the southward is not better founded than his 
remarks on the extension of the sand. For it is somewhat remarka- 
ble, that while the shape of the bottom of the gulf has been so very 
incorrectly laid down in modern charts as it is found to have been, 
the latitude which has been assigned to it by the same authorities 
is as near the truth as possible ; and we may safely affirm that the 
most southern part of the Gulf of Syrtis does not approach at all 
nearer to the desert than it is made to do in the charts alluded to by 
Signor Della Celia, notwithstanding the confidence with which the 
