BENGAZI.

347 very fertile and beautiful country, though a comparatively small portion of it only is cultivated. It may be described as a plain, thickly covered with wood and flowering shrubs, stretching itself from the sea to the foot of the mountains which form the northern hmits of the Cyrenaica, and narrowing every mile as you advance towards Ptolemeta, where the mountains run down very close to the sea. We have already stated that the space between this range and Bengazi is about fourteen geographic miles ; and the distance between it and the sea, at Ptolemeta, is no more than a mile, or a mile and a half ; the whole length of the plain, from Bengazi to Ptolemeta, being fiftyseven geographic miles. The sides of the mountains are also thickly clothed with wood, chiefly pine, of various kinds, and the juniper is found in great quantities among the other shrubs which overspread them.

Ravines, whose sides are equally covered with wood and verdure, cross the road very frequently, in their course from the mountains to the sea ; and most of these, as there is nothing hke a bridge over any of them, must be nearly impassable in winter. The force with which the water rushes down the ravines in the rainy season is evident from the slightest inspection ; the ground being furrowed and torn up in the parts which form the beds of the torrents, and encumbered with trees and stones of various sizes, washed down from the mountains and from the sides of the ravines. Open spaces are occasionally met with in the woods, some of which are of considerable extent ; these were probably once cultivated, but are now thickly covered with grasses of various kinds, among which we 2 Y 2