TRIPOLY TO BENGAZI. 
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plain of this description in the bottom of the Syrtis ; and, although 
there is no river, there are certainly mountains, if hills of sohd stone, 
of from four to six hundred feet in height, may be entitled to that 
distinction. 
It is true that the chain of hills at the bottom of the gulf run in 
an east and westerly direction, and might not, on that account, be 
well calculated for objects by which limits in the same direction 
might be ascertained ; but the account given by Sallust would lead 
us to imagine (as it seems to have done Signor Della Celia) that the 
place was without any inequalities of this nature whatever. 
Again, if it be true that Cato marched his army over the sand- 
hills which appear to have been so laboriously traversed by the 
army which the doctor accompanied, it was certainly no very good 
proof of the patriot’s generalship ; for, with the exception of one 
place, where the passage is occasionally impeded by marshy ground, 
reaching close up to the foot of the sand-hills on the beach, there 
could have been no occasion for crossing the sand at all, since the 
country to the southward of it is clear*. The same may be said of 
the whole tract of country in general, where sand-hills are found in 
the Syrtis and Cyrenaica ; the sand-heaps being confined to the 
beach alone, and not overspreading the whole face of the soil. 
* The water is, however, more frequently found among the sand on the beach than 
elsewhere ; but it scarcely seems necessary that the whole extent of the sand-hills 
should be traversed by the army on this account. Their guides must have known 
where the water was to be found, without the necessity of traversing so many miles of 
sand-heaps in search of it. 
