!

520 MERGE TO GYRENE.

each part would travel about, as if in search of the others, without any of them seeming to be the worse. The only mode by which we could kill them at once was by crushing the head, which effectually destroyed life in every other part instantaneously.

On arriving at Gyrene we immediately resumed our examination of the antiquities of the place, and were able to make out the ground plans much better than on former occasions; in consequence of finding the grass eaten up by the cattle and sheep of the Bedouins, I whom the scarcity of water, as we have already mentioned, had driven to the heights where the fountains are situated.

At the conclusion of the sixteenth chapter we have noticed two I theatres, near wBich our tents were pitched, and shall proceed to give some description of them. We found them both so much incumbered with the soil which had accumulated about them, in which the grass springs up to a considerable height, that, had it not been for the semicircular shape of the green masses which presented I themselves to our view, we should not have suspected them to have ■ been theatres. The columns which once ornamented the back of the scene in the largest of these buildings had been thrown (for they coidd scarcely have fallen) from the basement on which they formerly stood, , and crossed our track in various places along the whole length of the i range : among them were several statues, which appeared to have been portraits, executed wath great freedom and taste, and beyond were the I Corinthian capitals of the columns which had rolled, in their fall, to I I some distance from the shafts. These, as well as the bases, were t' ; composed of a fine white marble, the pohsh of which was in many i i iii ‘ii il I L .