thickly-planted fruit-trees of various kinds, and inaccessible on all
sides. I t was situated (on the authority of the same writer) at six
hundred and twenty stadia (or fifty geographical miles) from the
Port o f Barce; and this distance agrees precisely with that of the
places here alluded to from Ptolemeta, the port intended by Scylax,
as will be seen by a reference to the chart. The testimony of Pliny
is also very decided in fixing the site of the Hesperides in the neighbourhood
of Berenice. “Not far” (he says) “ from the city” (Berenice
is here meant) “ is the river Lethon, and the sacred grove where
the gardens of the Hesperides are said to be situated*.” Ptolemy
also may be supposed to intend the same position, when he informs
us, that the garden was to the westward of the people of Barca; or,
what is the same thing, that the Barcitas were to the eastward of the
garden of Hesperides ft
The name, indeed, itself of Hesperides would induce us to place
the Garden, so called, in the vicinity of Bengazi; for the Hesperides
were the early inhabitants of that part of the Cyrenaiea, and Hespe-
ris, as we have already stated, was the ancient name of the city of
Berenice, on the site of which Bengazi is built, J and which was probably
so called by the Greeks, from the circumstance of its being the
'most western city of the district.
* Nec procul ante oppidum fluvius Lethon, lucus sacer, ubi Hesperidum Horti me-
ihorantur.-—(Nat. Hist., lib. v. c. 5 .)' Again, in the same book, Berenice—quondam
vocata Hesperidum, &c.
*t* Buqxirai azso otvxraXaiv r o v x v i t t o u ratv 'JLmrepiSani.
J Beqevix.n n xat 'Eansgities.—(Ptol. Geogr.) : and as Stephanus describes it, in the
singular, 'EffTrsgir, ir o \ i s A.i£uvis, v i vov B s p o v i x v i .
I t has been supposed by Gosselin* and others, that those celebrated
gardens of early times (for they are frequently mentioned in
the plural) were nothing more than some of those Oases, or verdant
islands, i“ which reared their heads amid the sandy desert;” and, in
the absence of positive local information, the conjecture was sufficiently
reasonable.
The accounts which have come down to us of the desert of Barca,
from the pens of the Arab Historians, would lead us to suppose that
the country so called (which included not only the territory in question,
with the whole of the Pentapolis and Cyrenaiea, but also the
whole tract of coast between-Tripoly and Alexandria) was little more
than a barren tract of sand, scarcely capable of cultivation. Under
such an impression, we can readily imagine that modem writers
might be easily deceived; and when it was necessary to fix the site
of groves and gardens ,in the country so erroneously described, we
may certainly justify them in looking for such places in the only parts
of a sandy desert where luxuriant vegetation is found, the Oases, or
verdant islands alluded to. “ Objects here presented themselves”
(says the learned and ingenious Author of the Discoveries and
Travels in Africa, in speaking of the western coast of that country,
where the Hesperides have by some writers been placed) “ which
acted powerfully on the exalted and poetical imaginations of the
ancients. They were particularly struck by those Oases, or verdant
islands, which reared their heads amid the sandy desert. Hence,
* Geographie Ancienne; Murray’s account of Discoveries and Travels in Africa, &c.