viewing them as a refuge still left for mortals, from that troubled and
imperfect enjoyment which they were doomed to experience in every
other portion of the globe.” (Murray’s Account of Africa, vol. i.
chap. 1 .)
Nothing is more just than the picture of human nature here presented
to us by the intelligent writer just quoted; and it must be
confessed that the position of the Hesperian gardens has been fixed
by different authors in so many parts of thè coast of Africa, that we
may scarcely hope to reconcile statements so opposite.
The legends connected with these celebrated places are at the
same time so wild and extravagant, as well as so discordant with each
other, that we might often be tempted to consider the gardens themselves
as fabulous and imaginary spots, existing only in the creative
brain of the poet and the mythologist, and nowhere to be found in
reality.
We should not, however, say, from our view of the subject, that
“ the variety of position” assigned to the gardens of the Hesperidës
“ is referrible to no precise geographical d a t a the details which
we have already quoted from Scylax are too minute to be wholly
rejected ; and the position of the gardens, as laid down by Ptolemy
and Pliny, coincides with that assigned to them by Scylax.
We have shewn, at the same time, that the nature of the ground
in the neighbourhood of Berenice (or Bengali) is consistent with thé
account òf Scylax ; and that places like those which he has so
minutely described are actually to be found in the territory where
he has laid down the gardens. This singular formation, so far as
we have seen, is also peculiar to the country in question; and
we know of no other part of the coast of northern Africa where
the same peculiarities of soil are observable. We do not mean
to point out any one of these subterranean gardens as that which
is described in the passage above quoted from Scylax; for we know
of no one which will correspond in point of extent to the garden
which this author has mentioned: all those which we saw were
considerably less than the fifth of a mile in diameter (the measurement
given by Scylax) ; and the places of this nature which would
best agree with the dimensions in question, are now filled with water
sufficiently fresh to be drinkable, and take the form of romantic little
lakes.
Scarcely any two of the gardens we met with were, however, of
the same depth or extent; and we have no reason to conclude
that because we saw none which were large enough to be fixed upon
for the garden of the Hesperides, as it is described in the statement
of Scylax, there is therefore no place of the dimensions
required among those which escaped our notice—particularly as the
singular formation we allude to continues to the foot of the Cyrenaic
chain, which is fourteen miles distant, in the nearest part, from
Bengazi. When we consider that the places in question are all
of them sunk below the surface of the soil, and that the face of
the country in which they are found is overspread with brushwood,
and nowhere perfectly level, it will not be thought extraordinary
if some of them should have escaped us in a diligent and frequently
repeated search. At any rate, under the circumstances which