TRIPOLY TO BENGAZI. 29 has led him to encounter the fatigues and privations of a journey like that which he has accomplished. He is the first European who has crossed the Greater Syrtis since the occupation of Northern Africa by the Komans ; at least he is the only one that we know of, since that period, who has published any account of such a journey ; and he is therefore entitled to the merit of having afforded us the only information which has been given for many centuries of an interesting and extensive tract of country. Eut as we shall frequently have occasion to refer to his work in the course of the present narrative, we trust that we shall not be suspected of undervaluing its merits, because we may sometimes find it necessary to point out what we conceive to be its errors.

In considering the modern town of Tripoly as Oea, one difficulty will however present itself : Oea is no where mentioned as a port, that we have been able to discover ; whereas Tripoly must always have been one. But as many cities are mentioned as ports by one therefore less easy to imagine whence Pliny has derived his Neapolis, or what is his authority for the order in which he places the other cities of the district ; if indeed he intended them to be in order at all, which from his mention of Oea (the civitas Oeensis) conjointly with the river Cinyphus% we might probably be authorized in denying. We find Abrotonum also introduced by Cellarius, instead of Acholla, in the passage which he has quoted from Mela : the proper reading is — Hadrumetum, Leptis, Clypea, Acholla, Taphrure**, Neapolis, hiiic ad Syrtim adjacent, ut inter iguobilia celeberrimae.

» The Taphrure of Mela must not be eonfounded with Pliny’s Taphra, which is the same with Graphara or Garapha.

*> Mela has however done the same (ultra est Oea oppidum, et Cinypus fluvius, per uberrima arva decidens. . .) and the difficulty is increased by what follows — turn Leptis altera, &c. ; both accounts are very confused, and open to much discussion, but this is not the place for it, and we have already perhaps said too much upon the subject.