570 MERGE TO GYRENE.

away for several feet upwards. We may infer from these appearances, that in the rainy season the body of water which rushes along Wady Jerahib must be very great ; and to avoid the inconvenience to which travellers would in consequence have been exposed, we find the ancient road raised several feet above the actual level of the wady in other parts, and occasionally paved, and cut through the rock. At its western extremity. Wady Jerahib opens out into a very spacious and beautiful, we may say without exaggeration, a magnificent valley : at the entrance of which are the remains of a very large fort, now called by the Arabs Beliggidem ; the walls of this are still upwards of forty feet in height. Other valleys are seen from the fort, stretching out far into the blue horizon ; and we looked on all sides over the tops of thick forests of pine, which covered the sides and the summit of the wadies, as far as the eye could reach. Beliggidem may be called a very good day’s journey from Gyrene, which would more frequently, indeed, be extended to a day and a half. The road from hence winds through a succession of wadies, and we found it to be very indifferent ; till, after ascending a difficult hill, it brought us once more to Margad, — a spot at which we had stopped for the night on our journey froin Merge to Gyrene. From this place, our former conductor, Boo-Bukra, had turned off abruptly to the southward, in order to avoid passing through BelSnege (a part of the road which we had taken in returning), where he understood that the relations of two men whom he had killed were lying in wait for him. The party in advance had learnt this from an Arab at Belenege ; and it enabled us to account for the circuitous and difficult route along