Proceedings of the expedition to explore the northern coast of Africa, from Tripoly eastward

by Frederick William Beechey; H. W. Beechey

The chart ascribed to Ptolemy is the only one we are acquainted with which approaches to something like the actual form of the coast; and every step which modern geographers have receded from this outline has been a step farther from the truth.

It is difficult to say on what authorities the narrow inlet was originally introduced which terminates the gulf in the charts above mentioned; unless, indeed, the terms which have been used by ancient geographers, in describing this part of the Greater Syrtis, may be supposed to have occasioned the idea. The castle of Automala is mentioned by Strabo as situated in the innermost recess of the gulf[2]. And Pliny speaks of the coast inhabited by the Lotophagi (which he places in the Greater Syrtis) as being equally in the innermost part of the bay[3]. It may be possible that these terms have induced the more recent geographers to consider the gulf as terminating in an inlet, and to hazard, on their authority, the introduction of that which is now in question in the absence of any accurate survey. If such meaning can be supposed to have been extracted from the term used by Strabo, his authority might certainly have been safely relied upon by those who employed it on this occasion without any reproach to their caution; since this geographer himself visited the coast in a vessel, and may therefore be supposed to have seen what he described. However this may be, we can positively assert that no inlet whatever exists in the Gulf of Syrtis; and that the direction of the coast at the bottom of the gulf is, as nearly as possible, due east and west for a whole day’s journey together; turning afterwards to the northward so slightly, that this difference is scarcely perceptible to the eye. A large tract of quick sand is also laid down by many in this part of the Gulf of Syrtis; but we have traversed the sand and the sand-hills which are found here, on horseback, in almost every direction, and may safely affirm that they afford as good a footing as any dry sand or sand heaps can be supposed to present. If any other authority may be acceptable in proof of the extreme dryness of the sand in this neighbourhood, we have only to cite that of Doctor Della Cella to put everything like scepticism on this point at rest. “Woe be to us,” exclaims this gentleman, (in describing the sandy tract here alluded to) “if a sirocco, or southerly wind, had unhappily overtaken us in this place, the whole army would have been buried beneath the sands which the action of the winds here raised up in waves no less formidable than those of the sea!” Now if anything like moisture had really existed in the formidable particles which caused the Doctor such alarm, he might have looked in defiance at every point of the compass, without anticipating, with so much well-described horror, the fatal consequences which would have resulted to himself and the whole army, had the wind been unfortunately to the southward.

The anticipation of this premature burial was occasioned by the passage of Signor Della Cella 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 encumbrance 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 Cella 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 interior, between the sand-hills which he mentions and the desert[4]. “In the tract of country which lies at the bottom of the gulf” he saw nothing whatever but sand, and no hills whatever but[5] sand-hills.

From this circumstance the Doctor derives a new proof that the sand-hills have travelled from the southward; and in further proof of the non-existence of any chain of hills in this quarter, he has instanced the passage of northerly winds from the Mediterranean, to find their equilibrium in the southern regions of Africa; which passage they could not have effected, he supposes, if they had had a chain of hills to get over in their journey! The Doctor then proceeds to relate the expedition of the Psylli, as recorded by Herodotus, in further support of his position[6]; but in telling us that when these unfortunate gentlemen arrived on the confines of the desert, they were all of them buried in the sands which there assailed them, he does not express the surprise which might be expected at their 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 southward, 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 formidable red sand which at last put an end to them. The fact is, however, that the “ampia depressione” which is stated by Signor Della Cella to exist between the bottom of the gulf and the great desert, is unfortunately interrupted by a chain of hills, a little 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 peculiarity 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 Cella could have confounded it with the sand heaps thrown up on the beach we are at a loss to imagine; for these are considerably whiter than the desert sand, while the light powder in question is considerably redder. Besides, 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 Cella, we must also confess that his conjecture with respect to the extension of the gulf to the southward is not better founded than his remarks on the extension of the sand. For it is somewhat remarkable, 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 Cella, notwithstanding the confidence with which the Doctor maintains a contrary opinion, on the authority of his friend Captain Lautier[7].

It is somewhere at the bottom of the Syrtis[8] that we must have looked for the monuments erected to the Philæni, had they still been in existence; it appears however, as we have before mentioned, on the authority of Strabo, that they were no longer extant in the time of that geographer. But if the pillars have disappeared which marked the spot where the brothers were interred, the record of their patriotism still exists in the pages of history; and the account which has been given of this disinterested sacrifice by Sallust may not perhaps be unacceptable to the reader[9]. “At the time (says that historian) when the Carthaginians ruled over a great part of Africa, the people of Cyrene were also powerful and opulent. A sandy plain was on the frontiers of the two countries, the surface of which was uniform and unbroken, and neither mountain nor river appeared in it, by which the boundary of these kingdoms might be determined; a circumstance which occasioned many frequent and bloody wars between them. After various alternate successes and defeats, they entered into the following agreement; that certain persons deputed by each state should leave their home on an appointed day, and that the place where the parties might meet should be considered as the boundary of the kingdoms.”

“Two brothers, named Philæni, were appointed on the part of Carthage, who contrived to travel faster than the deputies from Cyrene, but whether this was occasioned by accident, or the indolence of the Cyreneans, I have not been able (says the historian) to ascertain.”

“Stormy weather (he adds) might undoubtedly occasion delays in such a country, as well as it is known to do at sea: for when violent winds prevail in level and barren tracts, the sand which is raised by them is driven so forcibly into the faces and eyes of those who cross them, that their progress is considerably impeded. So soon as the people of Cyrene were aware of the ground which they had lost, and reflected on the punishment which would await them, in consequence, on their return, they began to accuse the Carthaginians of having set out before the appointed time; and when a dispute arose on the subject, they determined to brave everything rather than return home defeated. In this state of affairs, the Carthaginians desired the Greeks to name some conditions of accommodation; and when the latter proposed that the deputies from Carthage should either be buried on the spot which they claimed as the boundary, or allow them to advance as far as they chose on the same conditions, the Philæni immediately accepted the terms, and giving themselves up to the service of their country, were buried alive on the spot where the dispute had occurred. On the same spot two altars were consecrated to their memory by the people of Carthage, and other honours were also decreed to them at home[10].”

In the old map of Peutinger (as we have stated above) we find the Philænean altars placed much farther to the westward in the neighbourhood of the little Syrtis; but the authorities of Ptolemy[11], Strabo, Pliny, and Mela, are sufficient to fix them in the Greater Syrtis; and as they are expressly stated by Strabo (lib. 17) to have occurred before Automala[12], in passing from west to east, we must suppose them to have existed somewhere in the tract of country just described, since the fortress of Automala is laid down by that geographer in the bottom of the gulf[13]. There is a difficulty in reconciling the accounts of Pliny and Mela on this point; for the Philænean altars are mentioned by the former of these writers as placed on the eastern boundary of the country of the Lotophagi, which he lays down in the bottom of the gulf[14]. Mela may be understood to assign the same position to the altars (although something appears wanting in the text in this part to connect the two sentences together)[15]; but then he makes the country of the Lotophagi commence at the Borion (Boreum) Promontorium, and finish at the promontory of Phycus (answering to Ras Sem), and this will place the Lotophagi far in the Cyrenaica, and out of the Gulf of Syrtis altogether, which finishes at the Boreum Promontorium.

It seems to be with the intention of reconciling these accounts in some degree, that Cellarius has placed a Boreum Promontorium and Oppidum in the bottom of the gulf. And he is indeed somewhat justified in doing so, by the position assigned to a city called Boreum (βοριον) by Procopius, which is mentioned by that writer as the most western city of the Pentapolis, and distant about four days from Augila. This is the city which we have mentioned, in speaking of Hudīa, as having been inhabited by Jews of the Cyrenaica; it was exempt from the payment of tribute and duties, and was fortified at the same time with the adjacent country, by the command of the emperor Justinian[16]. But the Borion Promontorium is at the same time mentioned by Pliny as the eastern extremity of the Gulf of Syrtis, as which it is also considered by Ptolemy and Strabo; so that except we may allow that there were two places of this name, we can see no mode of reconciling so many contradictory statements. This accommodation, as we have mentioned above, appears to have been intended by Cellarius, who has marked one of his promontories at the eastern boundary of the gulf, and placed the other at the bottom of it.