MERGE TO GYRENE. 421 of building are every where discernible in passing along this route, as we were able to ascertain in our return from Cyrene, which will hereafter be described. The southern road, however, is that which Abou-Bukra selected in escorting us from Merge to Grenna ; and we afterwards learnt that he had done so in consequence of the feud which he had upon his hands, (already alluded to above,) which rendered it unsafe for him to travel along the road most usually frequented. We had passed the remains of some strongly built forts in our route from Margad to Cyrene, and after ascending the high ground to the northward of Wady Bobkasaisheeta we came in sight of the numerous, we might almost say innumerable, tombs whicli encumber the outskirts of the town. It is well known that the burial-places of the ancients were usually without the walls of their cities ; and we find the tombs of Cyrene, (hke those of Pompeii and other places,) ranged along the sides of the roads by which the town is approached, and occupying, at the same time, the greater part of the space intervening between one road and another*. When we reflect that the inhabitants of this celebrated city have laid their mortal remains on the soil which surrounded it for more than twenty-four centuries, we shall not be surprised at the multitude of * It was not, however, unfrequerit to bury persons of moi-e than ordinary worth and consideration within the walls; and the most frequented and conspicuous places were in such cases selected for the tombs, or monuments, which the gratitude of citizens reared in the midst of their families. The Lacedaimonians, whose laws and customs were usually in direct opposition to the other states of Greece, allowed the dead to be buried indiscriminately within the walls of their cities, as we are told by Plutarch in his life of Lycurgus.