The story of a petrified city is well known all over Africa, and has been believed by many considerable persons even in Europe. Louis XIV. was so fully persuaded of its reality, that he ordered his ambassador to procure the body of a man petrified from it at any price. Dr Shaw's account of this affair is as follows: "About 40 years ago (now more than 70), when M. le Maire was the French consul at Tripoli, he made great inquiries, by order of the French court, into the truth of the report concerning a petrified city at Ras Sem; and amongst other very curious accounts relating to this place, he told me a remarkable circumstance, to the great discredit, and even confutation, of all that had been so positively advanced with regard to the petrified bodies of men, children, and other animals.

"Some of the janizaries, who, in collecting tribute, traverse the district of Ras Sem, promised him, that, as an adult person would be too cumbersome, they would undertake, for a certain number of dollars, to bring him from thence the body of a little child. After a great many pretended difficulties, delays, and disappointments, they produced at length a little Cupid, which they had found, as he learned afterwards, among the ruins of Leptis; and, to conceal the deceit, they broke off the quiver, and some other of the distinguishing characteristics of that deity. However, he paid them for it, according to promise, 1000 dollars, which is about 150 l. sterling of our money, as a reward for their faithful service and hazardous undertaking; having run the risk, as they pretended, of being strangled if they should have been discovered in thus delivering up to an infidel one of those unfortunate Mahometans, as they take them originally to have been.

"But notwithstanding this cheat and imposition had made the consul desist from searching after the petrified bodies of men and other animals; yet there was one matter of fact, as he told me, which still very strangely embarrassed him, and even strongly engaged him in favour of the current report and tradition. This was some little loaves of bread, as he called them, which had been brought to him from that place. His reasoning, indeed, thereupon, provided the pretended matter of fact had been clear and evident, was just and satisfactory;" satisfactory; for where we find loaves of bread, these, as he urged, some persons must have been employed in making them, as well as others for whom they were prepared. One of these loaves he had, among other petrifications, very fortunately brought with him to Cairo, where I saw it, and found it to be an echinites of the discoid kind, of the same fashion with one I had lately found and brought with me from the deserts of Marah. We may therefore reasonably conclude, that there is nothing to be found at Ras Sem, unless it be the trunks of trees, echinites, and such petrifications as have been discovered at other places.

"M. le Maire's inquiries, which we find were supported by the promise and performance of great rewards, have brought nothing further to light. He could never learn that any traces of walls, or buildings, or animals, or utensils, were ever to be seen within the verge of these pretended petrifications. The like account I had from a Sicilian renegade, who was the janizary that attended me whilst I was in Egypt; and as in his earlier years he had been a folder of Tripoli, he assured me that he had been several times at Ras Sem. This I had confirmed again in my return from the Levant by the interpreter of the British factory at Tunis, who was likewise a Sicilian renegade; and being the libertus or freedman of the bashaw of Tripoli, was preferred by him to be the bey or viceroy of the province of Darna, where Ras Sem was immediately under his jurisdiction. His account was likewise the same; neither had he ever seen, in his frequent journeys over this district, any other petrifications than what are above-mentioned. So that the petrified city, with its walls, cattles, streets, shops, cattle, inhabitants, and utensils, were all of them at first the mere inventions of the Arabs, and afterwards propagated by such persons, who, like the Tripoli ambassador, and his friend above-mentioned, were credulous enough to believe them.

However, there is one remarkable circumstance relating to Ras Sem that deserves well to be recorded. When the winds have blown away the billows of sand which frequently cover and conceal these petrifications, they discover, in some of the lower and more depressed places of this district, several little pools of water, which is usually of so ponderous a nature, that, upon drinking it, it passes through the body like quicksilver. This perhaps may be that petrifying fluid which has all along contributed to the conversion of the palm-trees and the echini into stone: for the formation not only of these, but of petrifications of all kinds, may be entirely owing to their having first of all lodged in a bed of loam, clay, sand, or some other proper nidus or matrix, and afterwards gradually been acted upon and pervaded by such a petrifying fluid as we may suppose this to be."

To this account it may not be amiss to subjoin the memorial of Caffem Aga, the Tripoli ambassador at the court of Britain. The city, he says, is situated two days journey south from Onguela, and 17 days journey from Tripoli by caravan to the south-east.

"As one of my friends (says the ambassador) desired me to give him in writing an account of what I knew touching the petrified city, I told him what I had heard from different persons, and particularly from the mouth of one man of credit who had been on the spot: that is to say, that it was a very spacious city, of a round form, having great and small streets therein, furnished with shops, with a vast cattle magnificently built: that he had seen there several sorts of trees, the most part olives and palms, all of stone, and of a blue or rather lead colour: that he saw also figures of men in a posture of exercising their different employments; some holding in their hands stuffs, others bread, every one doing something, even women suckling their children, and in the embraces of their husbands, all of stone: that he went into the castle by three different gates, though there were many more, where he saw a man lying upon a bed of stone: that there were guards at the gates with pikes and javelins in their hands: in short, that he saw in this wonderful city many sorts of animals, as camels, oxen, horses, asses, sheep, and birds, all of stone, and the colour above-mentioned."

We have subjoined this account, because it shows in striking colours the amazing credulity of mankind, and the avidity with which they swallow the marvellous, and the difficulty of discovering the truth respecting places or things at a distance from us.