QUICKSAND (ow' prts). In Acts xxvii. 17, it is mentioned that when the ship in which Paul was embarked was driven past the Isle of Clauda on the south, the mariners, as would now be said, struck the sails and scudded under bare poles, lest they should fall into the quicksands.' The original word Syrtis denotes a sandbank or shoal, dangerous to navigation, drawn, or supposed to be drawn (from aopco, to draw') together by the currents of the sea. Two syrtes, or gulfs with quicksands, were particularly famous among the ancients ; one called Syrtis Major, between Cyrene and Leptis, and the other, Syrtis Minor, near Car thage. Both then lay nearly to the south-west of the west end of Crete, adjoining which, on the south, lay the Isle of Clauda. These Syrtes were the great dread of those who navigated the seas in which the vessel was driven, and one of them was probably in this case the object of alarm to the mariners. The danger was not so imaginary in this case, we apprehend, as Dr. Falconer (Dissect, on St. Paul's Voyage, p. conceives. For the apprehension does not appear
to have been entertained till the ship had been driven past the isle of Clauda ; which, as we take it, is mentioned merely as the last point of land which had been seen till the ship was wrecked on the isle of Melita. The position of that island must be regarded as indicating the course in which they were driven ; and if that were Malta, it is clear, that had that course not been arrested by the intermediate shipwreck, they would in all proba bility have been driven upon the Syrtis Minor, which we may therefore conclude to have been the subject of their apprehension. That apprehension only becomes ' imaginary' when Meleda in the Adriatic is taken, as Dr. Falconer himself takes it, for the Melita of Scripture. It may therefore be added to the arguments in favour of Malta, that its identification with Melita gives reality to the fear entertained by the mariners, which under the other alternative must be supposed to have been imaginary. [MALTA.]