346 BENGAZI.

cora and Bengazi : two of our party had before made a trip, along the coast, to Ptolemeta, and returned in high spirits with what they had met with in that dehghtful part of the Pentapolis. On our route to Carcora we had been very much annoyed with a violent and parching sirocco wind, the heat of which would have been sufficiently disagreeable and oppressive, without the extreme annoyance of thick clouds of sand, whirling everywhere in eddies about us, which were driven with such force into our eyes as almost to prevent our making use of them.

Having completed the unfinished part of the coast-fine, we returned back to Bengazi, and found everything prepared for our journey to the eastward, through the diligence and activity of Lieutenant Coffin, who had been left at Bengazi for that purpose. During our absence at Carcora, Bey Halil had left the town, and pitched his tents in the fine plain of Merge, a large tract of table-land on the top of the mountains which bound Teuchira and Ptolemeta to the southward. The object of his journey was to collect the tribute from the neighbouring Bedouin tribes, and this is generally a work of much time and trouble, without which the contribution would not be paid at all. We had previously arranged with him that Hadood, Shekh of Barka, should have camels in readiness (on our return from Carcora) to carry our tents and baggage to the westward ; but finding they had not arrived, we with difficulty procured others, and set out from Bengazi on the seventeenth of April for Teuchira, Ptolemeta, and Cyren6.

The road from Bengazi to Teuchira and Ptolemeta lies through a