434 MERGE TO GYRENE.

so more rapidly, each descent being quickly succeeded by another, till they finish altogether at the foot of the mountain.

The position of Cyrene is, in fact, on the edge of a range of hills of about eight hundred feet in height, descending in galleries, one below another, till they are terminated by the level ground which forms the summit of a second range beneath it. At the foot of the upper range, on which the city was built, is a fine sweep of table-land most beautifully varied with wood, among which are scattered tracts of barley and corn, and meadows which are covered for a great part of the year with verdure. Kavines, whose sides are thickly covered with trees, intersect the country in various directions, and form the channels of the mountain-streams in their passage from the upper range to the sea. The varied tract of table-land of which we are speaking extends itself east and west as far as the eye can reach ; and to the northward (after stretching about five miles in that direction) it descends abruptly to the sea. The lower chain, which runs all along the coast of the Cyrenaica, is here, as it is at Ptolemeta and other places, thickly covered with wood, and intersected, like the upper range, with wild and romantic ravines; which assume grander features as they approach the sea. The height of the lower chain may be estimated at a thousand feet, and Cyrene, as situated on the summit of the upper one, is elevated about eighteen hundred feet from the level of the sea, of which it commands an extensive view over the top of the range below it*. For a day or two after our first arrival at * The height of the upper range from the level of the sea, as obtained by Captain Smyth from a sea base, was 1575 feet. — The dip of the visible sea horizon, x'epeatedly