332 BENGAZI.

are the existing remains of the Ilissus, the Simois, the Scamander, and other rivers, to which we have been in the habit of attaching importance, we must not be surprised to find a celebrated stream dwindled down into a very insignificant one. The changes which a lapse of nearly two thousand years may be supposed to have occasioned on the northern coast of Africa, are fully sufficient to have reduced the river Lathon to the spring which now flows into the Lake of Bengazi.

The lake itself is salt, and in the summer is nearly dry ; while the small stream in question takes its rise within a few yards of the lake, and running along a channel of inconsiderable breadth, bordered with reeds and rushes, might be mistaken by a common observer for an inroad of the lake into the sandy soil which bounds it.

On tasting it, however, we found its waters to be fresh, and the current which is formed by its passage into the lake is very evident on the slightest examination.

If we may suppose this little stream to be aU that now remains of the celebrated Kiver of Oblivion, we shall be enabled to throw light upon a passage in Strabo which has hitherto been the subject of much discussion.

It has been questioned by commentators, whether Strabo intended to make the river Lathon discharge itself into the lake, or into the jiort of the Hesperides ; and the near resemblance which the words (limen) and Xipuvri (limne), the former of which means a port, and the latter a lake, do certainly bear to each other, will allow of their being confounded in transcribing, by the mere transposition of a