Proceedings of the expedition to explore the northern coast of Africa, from Tripoly eastward

by Frederick William Beechey; H. W. Beechey

We are too well acquainted with the talent of amplification so generally possessed by Turks and Arabs of all classes, to rely implicitly upon the truth of every part of the above-mentioned narrative related to us by the Bey of Bengazi: there is, however, no reason, of which we are aware, connected with the nature of the place, which militates against its probability; and we submit it accordingly, as we received it, to our readers, in the absence of more decided information.

We have already wandered into the regions of fable in speaking of the Gardens of the Hesperides; and before we retrace our steps, we must be permitted to linger for a while on the borders of the mysterious, hidden stream above-mentioned.

The Lethe, or Lathon, (for it is no less a stream to which we are going to call the attention of our readers,) is laid down by geographers in the neighbourhood of the gardens, and close to the city of the Hesperides.

Strabo makes the Lathon flow into the harbour of the Hesperides, and Ptolemy also lays down the same river between Berenice and Arsinoe; Pliny describes the Lathon as situated in the neighbourhood of Berenice, and Scylax places a river (which he calls Ecceus, Εκκειος) in a similar situation. The river Lethe is supposed to have lost itself underground, and to re-appear (like the Niger) in another place[26]; and the point to which we would call the attention of the reader is—whether the subterranean stream above-mentioned, which certainly may be said to lose itself underground, be the source of the Lethe, or Lathon, in question? and whether a small spring, which runs into the lake near the town of Bengazi, may be supposed to be the re-appearance of the same river, in the place so decidedly assigned to it by Strabo—the port of the Hesperides, or, which is the same, of Berenice.

The circumstance of finding a subterranean stream in this neighbourhood, between the mountains and the lake which joins the Harbour of Bengazi, would certainly appear to favour the conclusion, that the course of the stream was towards the lake, that is to say, from the higher ground to the lower. And although the mere discovery of a small stream of fresh water emptying itself into the lake here alluded to, does not by any means tend to confirm the existence of a communication between it and the subterranean stream in question; yet there is no proof (at least, not that we are aware of) that one of these is not connected with the other. At the same time we may add, that if it were really ascertained that no connexion existed between the two, such a circumstance would not be considered as proving that the ancients did not suppose that they communicated. It was believed by the Greeks (or, at any rate, it was asserted by them) that the Alpheus communicated with the fountain of Arethusa, and that anything thrown into the former at Elis would re-appear on the waters of the latter in Sicily.

Other instances might be mentioned of similar extravagancies, which are considered by the moderns as poetical inventions, and never received as historical facts. The disappearance of the Lathon, and its subsequent rise, might have been equally a poetical fiction; but when we find, in the country in which it was placed, a large body of water which actually loses itself, we are naturally led to believe one part of the assertion, and to seek to identify the actual subterranean stream with that which is said to have existed. On a reference to the authority of geographers and historians, we find a river called Lathon laid down very clearly in the place where this body of water is found, and we remark that the name which they apply to the river signifies hidden or concealed. So far there is a probability that the Lathon of the ancients and the subterranean stream in the neighbourhood of Bengazi may be one and the same river.

Again, we are told, on the authority of Strabo, that the Lathon discharged itself into the Harbour of the Hesperides; and we find a small spring actually running into the lake which is connected with the harbour in question; and which might, from the position of the subterranean spring between it and the mountains to the southward of it, have received at least a portion of the waters, which lose themselves in a place where the level is higher. When we find that the Lathon (or hidden stream) of Bengazi is directly between the mountains and the harbour, it becomes the more probable that such a communication may have existed; and whether the little spring which runs into the lake be a continuation of the Lathon or not, there appears to be quite sufficient reason for believing that the ancients might have imagined it was. If we consider how trifling are the existing remains of the Ilissus, the Simois, the Scamander, and other rivers, to which we have been in the habit of attaching importance, we must not be surprised to find a celebrated stream dwindled down into a very insignificant one. The changes which a lapse of nearly two thousand years may be supposed to have occasioned on the northern coast of Africa, are fully sufficient to have reduced the river Lathon to the spring which now flows into the Lake of Bengazi.

The lake itself is salt, and in the summer is nearly dry; while the small stream in question takes its rise within a few yards of the lake, and running along a channel of inconsiderable breadth, bordered with reeds and rushes, might be mistaken by a common observer for an inroad of the lake into the sandy soil which bounds it.

On tasting it, however, we found its waters to be fresh, and the current which is formed by its passage into the lake is very evident on the slightest examination.

If we may suppose this little stream to be all that now remains of the celebrated River of Oblivion, we shall be enabled to throw light upon a passage in Strabo which has hitherto been the subject of much discussion.