Page:The Natural History of Pliny.djvu/426

 392 PLI^fT's IfATUEAL HISTOEY. [Book T. of their quicksands and the ebb and flow of the sea. Poly- bius states the distance from Carthage to the Lesser Syrtis, the one which is nearest to it, to be 300 miles. The inlet to it he also states to be 100 miles across, and its circum- ference 300. There is also a way^ to it by land, to find which we must employ the guidance of tlie stars and cross deserts which present nothing but sand and serpents. After passing these we come to forests filled with vast multitudes of wild beasts and elephants, then desert wastes^, and beyond them the Graramantes^, distant twelve days' journey from the Augylae^, Above the Garamantes was formerly the na- Giilf of Cabes, and the Greater the Gulf of Sydra. The country situate between the two Syrtes is called Tripoh, formerly Tripohs, a name which, according to Sohnus, it owed to its three cities, Sabrata, LeptK, and CEa. 1 Marcus observes with reference to this passage, that both Hardouia and Poinsinet have mistaken its meaning. They evidently think that Pliny is speakmg here of a route to the Syi-tes leading from the interior of Ah'ica, whereas it is pretty clear that he is speaking of the dangers which attend those who approach it by the line of the sea-coast, as Cato did, on his march to Utica, so beautifully described by Lucan in Ms Ninth Book. This is no doubt the same route which was taken by the caravans on their passage from Lebida, the ancient Leptis, to Berenice m Cyi'enaica. 2 Those which we find at the middle of the coast bordering upon the Greater Syrtis, and which separate the mountains of Eezzan and Atlas fr'om Cyrenaica and Barca. 3 In its widest sense this name is applied to all the Libyan tribes in- habiting the Oases on the eastern part of the Great Desert, as the Gsetu- lians mhabited its western part, the boundary between the two nations being drawn at the soxirces of the Bagrada and the mountain Usargala. In the stricter sense however, and in which the term must be here under- stood, the name 'Garamantes' denoted the people of Phazania, the mo- dem Fezzan, which forms by far the largest oasis in the Grand Desert of Zahara. i^ Augylcc, now Axxjelah, was an oasis in the desert of Barca, in the region of Cyrenaica, about 3-^° south of Cyrene. It has been remarked that Pliny, here and in the Eighth Chapter of the present Book, in abridg- ing the account given by Herodotus of the tribes of Northern Africa, has transferred to the Augylse what that author really says of the Nasamones. This oasis fonns one of the chief stations on the caravan route from Cairo to Fezzan. It is placed by EenneU in 30° 3' North Lat. and 23° 46' East Long., 180 miles soxith-east of Barca, ISO west by north of Siwah, the ancient Amrnonimn, and 426 east by north of Mourzouk. Later autho- rities, however, place the village of Aujelah m 29° 15' North Lat. and 21° 55' East Long.