264 
JOURNEY FROM 
which it was situated was uninhabited, from Mesurata to Alexan- 
dria, before the arrival of the Mahometans in Africa*. 
It must, however, be confessed, that the half-starved Musselmen 
with whom he has peopled it were scarcely more deserving of our 
commisseration than the “ vastae Nasamon populator Syrtis,” or any 
other of the very respectable personages of antiquity who are said to 
have inhabited this coast. The Sicilians were most probably aware of 
the character of their customers before they exacted from them the 
hostages above described ; for Leo goes on to say, that these Arabs 
* Prhna che gli Ai'abi venissero in Africa fu il detto diserto dishabitato : ma poi 
che, &c. 
There can be no doubt that the desert of Barca, here described, is the whole tract of 
country boi’dering on the Mediterranean, from Mesui’ata to Alexandria ; for, after 
having described Mesurata as situated on the coast, the author proceeds to observe — 
“ This desert (that of Barca) begins from the coniines of the district of Mesurata, and 
extends itself eastward as far as the confines of Alexandria, a space of about one thousand 
three hundred miles in length, and about two hundred in breadth.” The dimensions of 
Barca here given appear to be as singular as the description already noticed of it 
which follows ; for besides that the length is much too great, the two hundred miles 
of bi-eadth which is allotted to it would carry us far to the southward of Augila, 
into the desert of Libya, which does not seem, from other passages, to have been intended 
by Leo. We were ourselves, at one time, in passing along the eastern side of the Gulf 
of Syrtis, only four days’ journey from Augila ; and it then bore to the eastward of 
the south ; so that it could not be anything like two hundred miles from the coast, even 
reckoning from the most northern part of the Cyrenaica. 
The place mentioned by Strabo in the following passage, as being four days easy 
journey from the bottom of the Syrtis, could scarcely be any other than Augila. 
TETa^Taiot/f ptEV oi/v (pas-tv asro rov f/.vy(pv r-ns piEyaXsir rovs xar cturo lA-aXocxuis 
^ovTaj- MS E9TI %Ei/x£^ivay avaVoXar apixvEisSat. Esti Se o tottos ovros s/J.(psq'ris tm A^/aovi, 
(potvtxoTgo(pos- TE xai suvS^os. — Lib. xvii. p. 838. 
Procopius also (de .^dificiis, lib. v.) makes Augila four days’ journey from Borium, 
(the Borium Oppidum, at the bottom of the Gulf.) 
