Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 2.djvu/38

 22 NORTH-WEST AFRICA. permanently from perennial springs. About five miles east of the town an under- ground rivulet flows through a deep gallery, which may be reached by a large drain and followed for some distance. This mysterious stream is the famous Lathon or Lethe, the "river of oblivion," seen for a moment and then disappearing for ever. Nevertheless a rivulet flows from these hidden waters through a fissure in the rock to the shallow lake stretching east of Benghazi. This swampy lagoon is itself famous in legendary lore. According to Pindar, Strabo, Lucan, and the unknown authors of " Peutinger's Table," it is a lake Triton or Tritonis, like that situated west of the Syrtes. Beyond Benghazi the coast continues to trend first towards the south-west, then south and south-east, before describing the long semicircular curve which forms the gulf of the Great Syrtis. Along the shores of this vast southern basin of the Mediterranean no towns or habitations are met, beyond a few groups of hovels and Bedouin encampments. Not even the ruins have survived of A/abia, which, in medieval times, was a populous and flourishing place as an outport for the products of the oases. The coast, especially in the neighbourhood of Benghazi, is defended by a considerable number of little forts, some mere towers of Arab construction, others old bastions built of Cyclopean blocks. These form square enclosures rounded off at the angles, and filled inside with earth, so that the wall forms a sort of breastwork for the defenders. Beyond it is a deep moat, with bold counterscarp, cut in the live rock, all evidently defensive works erected by civilised peoples in pre-Mussulman times. A few cultivated tracts, which become continually rarer the farther we advance from the capital of Barka, alternate with the grassy steppes and saline pools skirted by swampy margins. Low hills scored with ravines, the haunts of jackals and hyenas, project in headlands seawards. Here and there the coast is fringed with reefs, while elsewhere sandy dunes line the open beach. Not a single palm raises its leafy stom above these dreary, surf-beaten wastes, which are the terror of the mariner. Here the only haven is the little port of Braiga, formed by a chain of reefs, and visited by a few vessels engaged in the sulphur trade. This mineral is collected some distance inland, south of the extreme southern bend of the gulf, which is sometimes known as " Sulphur Bay." In the same neighbourhood is a saline lake, whose level has been reduced by evaporation below that of the Mediterranean. At Mttkhtar, the point where the road from the mines reaches the coast, a few heaps of stones serve to mark the frontier between the Benghazi district and Trii)olitana, properly so called. Near here, according to the commentators, if the story is not altogether fabulous, took place the famous meeting between the young Cyrenian and Carthaginian runners, who, starting from their respective territories at the same time, were to fix the frontier at the place of meeting. But the two brothers Philooni, who represented the interests of Carthage, fraudulently gained an unfair advantage in the race, and having- to choose between death on the spot and a fresh contest, preferred to be buried alive under the monument erected to mark the common limit between the two states. Henceforth ihe shrine of the Philocni became a hallowed spot for the Carthaginians. *