TRIPOLY TO BENGAZI. 2QS have preferred removing their whole establishment to another place, which might be better provided with water, to the trouble of digging for it where they were.

It is not only in the works of early writers that we find the nature of the Syrtis misunderstood ; for the whole of the space between Mesurata and Alexandria is described by Leo Africanus (under the title of Barca), as “ a wild and desert country, where there is neither water nor land capable of cultivation He allows, however, that the country was inhabited, after the occupation of Africa by the Arabs, though not before that period ; and tells us, that the most powerful among the Mahometan invaders possessed themselves of the fertile parts of the coast, leaving the others only the desert for their abode, exposed to all the miseries and privations attendant on it : for this desert, he continues, is far removed from any habitation, and nothing is produced there whatever. So that if these poor people would have a supply of grain, or of any other articles necessary to their existence, they are obliged to pledge their children to the Sicilians who visit the coast ; who on providing them with these things, which they bring with them from Sicily, carry off the children they have received. Here we have the whole of the Syrtis and Cyrenaica described as a desert tract of country ; and although the same author states, that “ Sert was an ancient city, built, as some think, by the Egyptians, and, as others believe, by the Komans,” he informs us that the country in * Una campagna diserta et aspera, dove non si trova ne acqua ne ten-eno da coltivare. — (Leo Afr. in Ram. 5“ parte, p. 72.)