From the circumstance of the water in Bengazi being brackish, it is probable that the ancient town was furnished with an aqueduct from some springs of sweet water, about half a mile distant from it to the eastward; and the existence of remains of ancient reservoirs, or cisterns, with troughs, constructed of stone, leading into them, still observable on the beach where the coins and gems are collected, would seem, in some degree, to favour this supposition[16].
On first discovering the quarries from which the city of Berenice, and probably that of Hesperis also, have been constructed, we flattered ourselves that we should have found them full of excavated tombs, which are usually formed in similar situations, when the quarries are not far from the town: but two or three chambers only appeared, which did not seem to us to have been intended for places of burial, and the tombs of both cities must be looked for in the plain, under the soil or the sand which now conceals them[17].
The trees and shrubs which are growing in the quarries we allude to, and have rooted themselves, at the same time, in the sides of the rocks which they are formed in, give these places a very wild and picturesque appearance, not unworthy of the pencil of Salvator; and, had not our time been fully occupied in research, when the weather allowed us to ramble, we should have been glad to have made some sketches of them. The caper plant is found there in great abundance, and spreads itself, like ivy, over the steep sides of the rocks, hanging down in the most luxuriant and beautiful clusters.
In speaking of the steep rocks in which these quarries are formed, we must state, that they do not rise above the surface of the plain, but are sunk down, perpendicularly, to a considerable depth, so as not to be visible till they are closely approached. Besides the quarries here mentioned, some very singular pits or chasms, of natural formation, are found in the neighbourhood of Bengazi: they consist of a level surface of excellent soil, of several hundred feet in extent, inclosed within steep, and for the most part perpendicular, sides of solid rock, rising sometimes to a height of sixty or seventy feet, or more, before they reach the level of the plain in which they are situated. The soil at the bottom of these chasms appears to have been washed down from the plain above by the heavy winter rains, and is frequently cultivated by the Arabs; so that a person, in walking over the country where they exist, comes suddenly upon a beautiful orchard or garden, blooming in secret, and in the greatest luxuriance, at a considerable depth beneath his feet, and defended on all sides by walls of solid rocks, so as to be at first sight apparently inaccessible. The effect of these secluded little spots, protected, as it were, from the intrusion of mankind by the steepness and the depth of the barriers which inclose them, is singular and pleasing in the extreme: they reminded us of some of those secluded retreats which we read of in fairy legends and tales, and we could almost fancy ourselves, as we looked down upon them, in the situation of some of those favoured knights and princes, the heroes of our earlier days, who have been permitted to wander over the boundaries of reality into regions shut out from the rest of mankind.
It was impossible to walk round the edge of these precipices, looking everywhere for some part less abrupt than the rest, by which we might descend into the gardens beneath, without calling to mind the description given by Scylax of the far-famed garden of the Hesperides.
This celebrated retreat is stated by Scylax to have been an inclosed spot of about one-fifth of a British mile[18] across, each way, filled with thickly-planted fruit-trees of various kinds, and inaccessible on all sides. It was situated (on the authority of the same writer) at six hundred and twenty stadia (or fifty geographical miles) from the Port of 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[19].” 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 Barcitæ were to the eastward of the garden of Hesperides[20].
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 Cyrenaica, and Hesperis, as we have already stated, was the ancient name of the city of Berenice, on the site of which Bengazi is built,[21] and which was probably so called by the Greeks, from the circumstance of its being the most western city of the district.
It has been supposed by Gosselin[22] 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, “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 Cyrenaica, 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 modern 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, doubtless, were drawn those brilliant pictures of the Hesperian gardens, the Fortunate Islands, the Islands of the Blest, which are painted in such glowing colours, and form the gayest part of ancient mythology. The precise position of these celebrated spots has been a subject of eager and doubtful inquiry. The chief difficulty is, that there are different points of the continent in which they seem to be fixed with almost equal precision. In fact, it seems clearly shewn, by some learned writers[23], that this variety of position is referrible, not to any precise geographical data, but to the operation of certain secret propensities that are deeply lodged in the human breast.”
“There arises involuntarily in the heart of man a longing after forms of being, fairer and happier than any presented by the world before him—bright scenes which he seeks and never finds, in the circuit of real existence. But imagination easily creates them in that dim boundary which separates the known from the unknown world. In the first discoverers of any such region, novelty usually produces an exalted state of the imagination and passions; under the influence of which every object is painted in higher colours than those of nature. Nor does the illusion cease, when a fuller examination proves that, in the place thus assigned, no such beings or objects exist. The human heart, while it remains possible, still clings to its fond chimeras: it quickly transfers them to the yet unknown region beyond; and, when driven from thence, discovers still another more remote in which they can take refuge. Thus we find these fairy spots successively retreating before the progress of discovery; yet finding still, in the farthest advance which ancient knowledge ever made, some remoter extremity to which they can fly.”