TRIPOLY TO BENGAZI.

77 were in the very worst style of the Lower Empire. There are also many evidences of the city having been occupied after its first and violent destruction, from several of the walls and towers being built of various architectural fragments confusedly heaped together.

Although there are several exceedingly fine brick and cementitious edifices, most of the walls, arcades, and public buildings, are composed of massy blocks of freestone, and conglomerate, in layers, without cement, or at most with very little. The temples were constructed in a style of the utmost grandeur, adorned with immense columns of the most valuable granites and marbles, the shafts of which consisted of a single piece. Most of these noble ornaments were of the Corinthian order ; but I also saw several enormous masses of architecture, ornamented with triglyphs, and two or three cyathiform capitals, which led me to suppose that a Doric temple, of anterior date, had existed there. On a triple plinth near them I observed a species of socte, used in some of these structures as the base of a column, with part of the walls of the Celia, surrounded by a columnar peristyle.

The city was encompassed by strong walls of solid masonry, pierced with magnificent gates, and was ornamented with spacious porticoes, sufficient portions of which still remain to prove their former splendour. It was divided from its principal suburb to the east by a river, the mouth of which forming a spacious basin, was the Cothon, defended at its narrow entrance by two stout fortifications ; and branching out from them, may be observed, under water, the remains of two large moles. On the banks of this river, the bed of which is