BENGAZI.

353 time allowed us to copy, will be found at the end of the chapter, with further details of the buildings ; and in the mean time we refer our readers to the plan of the city annexed.

Teuchira, or Tauchira, was a town of Barca, of considerable antiquity : its name was changed under the Ptolemies to Arsinoe, and subsequently (by Mark Antony) to Cleopatris ; but its original appellation has survived the others, and it is to this day distinguished by the name of Tauchira, or Tocra, under which it is known to the Arabs.

The walls of Teuchira (we are informed by Procopius*) were repaired under the emperor .Justinian, and they still remain in a state of perfection which sufficiently proves the solidity of the work.

They are built of very massy blocks of stone, conformably with the statement of the historian, many of which have formed parts of much earlier buildings, as the inscriptions found upon them demonstrate.

\ ery little of the history of Teuchira has come down to us ; and we scarcely know more of it, than that it formed one of the cities of the Pentapolis. Although it is situated close to the sea, which washes the northern face of it, Teuchira could never have been a port ; as it affords no protection whatever for vessels derived from its natural position, and there are not the slightest traces now visible of anything like a cothon having been constructed there ; which, indeed, it would have been folly to have attempted in the exposed situation of the place f .

* De Aeclificiis.

t The water is also too deep to admit of one, and becomes so on a sudden within few feet of the beach.

a