554 MERGE TO GYRENE.

the dampness of the place, and its extreme seclusion, which would conspire to prevent the clay from cracking and dropping off, and from being rubbed off by intruders ; but we were not prepared to meet with inscriptions engraved on so yielding a substance, and certainly not to find that, having once been written, they should have remained on it down to the present day, as perfect as when they were left there by those whose visit they were intended to commemorate.

They consist, of course, chiefly in a collection of names ; many of which are Eoman, and the earliest of the most conspicuous dates which we remarked and copied, (for it would take whole days to read and copy them all) were those of the reign of Dioclesian. We coxdd collect no other fact from those which w e read, than that a priest appears to have officiated at the fountain, after Cyrene became a Koman colony, whose name and calling (in the form jot &c.)

are usually written after the name of the visiter. They are in general very rudely scratched, with a point of any kind (a sword or knife, perhaps, or the stone of a ring,) and often with the point of the fingers. We observed a few Arabic inscriptions among the rest, but were so much occupied in reading over the Greek ones, in order to gain some intelligence respecting the fountain, which might serve to throw light upon the period at which the channel was excavated, or other questions of interest, that we neglected to copy them. There is an appearance in one of the Greek inscriptions of allusion to the name of Apollo, the deity to wdiom we suppose this fountain to have been sacred ; but the letters are not sufficiently clear to establish the fact decidedly, although we