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'Have we escaped the Syrtes to fall upon AEneas' cave? murmured Arthur to himself. 'And if we could meet Queen Dido, or maybe Venus herself, 'twould be no bad thing! observed Lanty, who remembered his Virgil on occasion. 'For there's not a drop of wather left barring eau de vie, and if these Moors get at that, 'tis raving madmen they would be. 'Do they know where we are? asked Arthur.

Valuable series of observations were, nevertheless, made at Lick and Arequipa; and they unite in testifying to the genuine prevalence of surface-variability, especially in certain regions of intermediate tint, and perhaps of the "crude consistence" of "boggy Syrtes, neither sea, nor good dry land."

Others had returned from India with peacocks, pepper, and new textures. As to those who go by way of the Syrtes and the temple of Ammon to purchase chalcedony, they had no doubt perished in the sands. The caravans from Gaetulia and Phazzana had furnished their usual supplies; but he, the Chief of the Journeys, did not venture to fit one out just now.

Cornelia sat for hours on the poop, beneath a crimson awning, watching the foam scudding out from under the swift-moving keel, and feeling the soft, balmy Notos, the kind wind of the south, now and then puff against her face, when the west wind veered away, and so brought up a whiff of the spices and tropic bloom of the great southern continent, over the parching deserts and the treacherous quicksands of the Syrtes and the broad "unharvested sea."

If this name comes from the Carthaginians, who may have frequented these coasts, they must have been particularly struck with their resemblance to the famous Syrtes in their own neighbourhood, which mariners took so much care to avoid. Exercitas aut petit Syrtes Noto.

Merchant vessels were shy of sailing in the dangerous Gulf of the Greater Syrtes with its heavy tides and spreading sandbanks, and even the war-galleys of Venice and Spain were at a disadvantage when manoeuvring in its treacherous eddies against the Corsair who knew every inch of the coast.

On the Lesser Syrtes the Roman fleet grounded; fortunately it was low water, and moderate weather at the time, so that on the return of flood tide, the vessels floated off, with little or no damage, but the consuls were dreadfully alarmed. This, however, was only a prelude to real disaster: the fleet arrived safe at Panormus, where they remained a short time.

And others say that they went southward, into the Red Indian Sea, and past the sunny lands where spices grow, round AEthiopia toward the West; and that at last they came to Libya, and dragged their ship across the burning sands, and over the hills into the Syrtes, where the flats and quicksands spread for many a mile, between rich Cyrene and the Lotus-eaters' shore.

Since my physical infirmity had made it impossible for me to profit by the present winter, he urged that it would be well to wait for the next owing to the danger presented by the passage of the Syrtes and the risk of encountering wild beasts. His urgent entreaty induced my friends the Appii to allow me to leave them and to become his guest in his mother's house.

To the west again of Bizantium, quite to the salt mere of the Arzuges ; this nation has to the east the Syrtes Majores, with the land of Rogathite; and to the south the Natabres, Geothulas, and Garamantes , quite to the sea of Bizantium. The sea ports of these nations are Adrumetis and Zuges, and their largest town is Catharina.