After passing the pools, where I had stayed so long, we came in sight of the line of the fortifications, which are now almost buried in sand, and of one of the city gates, still an imposing mass. The plain where Tolmeta stood did not become visible until we had crossed the low ridge formed by the fallen walls. Great was the disappointment I experienced on my first view of the city, and greater became my disappointment the more I saw of it. Three columns standing over large covered cisterns, and two smaller ones not far distant, the ruined apse of a Christian church (probably of the fourth century), catch the eye; but the general impression of the entire surface is that of a huge piece of new macadamisation, so thickly is the ground strewed with small fragments. The celebrated barracks have been lately despoiled, by truly Vandalic hands, of the curious inscription which rendered the building so interesting, and to obtain which the greater part of the front facing the sea has been overthrown. The destruction of it seems to have been as wanton as the labour of it must have been great, the architecture being of the most solid description. I was told that in attempting their removal one of the slabs was so broken that the author of this devastation left it lying on the ground; and that after an interval of two or three years, when he had learnt in Paris that an inscription, of which a third part is wanting, is worthless, he sent for the remaining fragments, which were already illegible. If those employed were incapable of taking an accurate copy of the inscription, one would suppose that they might at least have made a cast of it, and at less expense, and thus have left the only monument worth visiting in Ptolemais still retaining its external form, and the disposition of its interior still traceable, and unchoked by newly-made ruins. The three Ionic columns, which have been described as dating from the earliest times and of remarkable purity, seemed to me of a late epoch, when not a tradition of true beauty remained; they are clumsy, and badly chiselled, nor did I see in the whole space any fragments of sculpture or architecture in a good style of art. There are ten vaulted buildings, and a very large rectangle rising only a few feet above the soil, whose purpose cannot even be guessed at; scanty remains of a theatre, the outlines of an amphitheatre, formed in a quarry, having no feature of interest, complete the catalogue of the ruins within the town. The fortifications towards the sea, consisting of a series of forts, are well preserved, though nearly buried in sand; but the most conspicuous object is the gateway I have already mentioned, whose two flank towers are still nearly perfect. On the stones of which these are built are many inscriptions, whose irregularity would lead one to the idea that they are of very recent date, or even to fancy them the work of industrious idlers, bent upon thus immortalising their names. Fox’s and many other names, carved with a knife on the old walls at Eton, are far better specimens of caligraphy. More interesting than these are the quarry-marks, many of them in Barbary characters, which are found here, as well as on one of the forts on the sea-wall.
REMAINS OF IONIC BUILDING AT PTOLEMAIS.
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On the second day of my stay here the clouds gathered thick towards sunset, whereupon soon followed a storm of lightning and rain, such as I have seldom witnessed. The autumnal rains had commenced, and it was evident that my proper course was a speedy return to Benghazi, as when it does rain here it continues, almost without intermission, for many days, and with a frantic violence which no tents can withstand. I had been too much disappointed with the remains of Tolmeta to regret having to shorten my stay here; and when the rain ceased the next morning, or only continued in fitful showers, I had the wet tents and baggage placed on the camels, and took my departure for Tancra, the ancient Tenchira. It was, however, so late before a start could be made, that at sunset we were still at no great distance from the ruins, and finding a good place for encamping near some wells, and fields sown with izra, I stopped there. The route is along the sea-shore, through a wide plain covered with briars and baturne bushes, showing only in very few places slight marks of cultivation. A soft warm wind, like that of a spring morning, made the ride through the clean-washed underwood delightful, and I fancied I could already see signs of fresh vegetation in the briars. It took, in all, nine hours and a half to reach Tancra from Dolmeita. Near the old town are many patches of cultivated ground, producing vegetables and fruit, the property of Arab families, who inhabit many of the excavated tombs in the quarries on either side of the town.
The first view of Tancra rather disappointed me. So much has been written about the perfect state of the walls, that I arrived there with the expectation of finding them more perfect than the walls of either Rome or Constantinople; and what, indeed, have these cities, amidst all their remains of bygone days, to offer of more interest than their venerable walls, which, after withstanding unnumbered hostile attacks, still retain so much of their historical significance? The circuit of the walls of Tenchira is on three sides entire; the disposition of the towers is well marked, and the places of the gates may be conjectured: in many parts the wall is not more than two or three feet high, in some it is reduced to a mere heap of stones, and in none does it exceed fourteen or fifteen feet. At the eastern extremity, a quarry has been taken advantage of, to add strength to the wall by being made to serve as a ditch; on the ground above there are remains of a strong fortalice. Within these is another quarry, which serves to isolate the fortress—a narrow ledge of rock, along which the wall ran, alone affording access to it; this, with a third parallel to the sea, seems to have completed this curious defensive structure, for such I suppose it may be considered. The walls are, doubtless, interesting to the military antiquarian, exhibiting, as they do very perfectly, the system of fortification used at the time of their reconstruction or repair by order of Justinian; but they disappoint the traveller in search of the artistic or the picturesque, who had hoped to find in Greek or Roman style what Alatri presents in the Cyclopean. The ill-carved inscriptions with which they are covered—mere records of names which have evidently belonged to other buildings, and many of them now turned upside down—possess no kind of interest; and I am inclined to think that the walls of Apollonia, if cleared of their rubbish, would be found more perfect, as well as more picturesque. But if disappointed with the exterior of the town, I was equally surprised by finding the contents of the interior more interesting than anything I had met with in the Cyrenaica; and then I had to regret that I had allowed myself to be so long enchained by the delightful climate of the hills, as to render a long stay in Tancra impossible on account of the rains, which this year set in nearly a month earlier than usual. The town, indeed, contains no monuments of any great elevation, which accounts for the little attention which seems to have been bestowed on Tancra by previous travellers; at the season when they visited it everything must have been hidden by the long grass; but when the ground is bare of vegetation, as at my visit, many lines of streets become as distinctly traceable as those of Pompeii, and even the ground plans of the houses which bordered them. Among the larger buildings, are to be remarked the ruins of a church in the west of the city, and those of a large quadrangle, with a well-preserved reservoir within its precincts, which, from its similarity to the hapless barracks at Dolmeita, must have had a similar purpose. Further eastward, is a striking edifice bearing inscriptions, which may have been a temple or a basilica, but its interior is so completely filled with rubbish, that its plan cannot be distinguished. No trace of a theatre, amphitheatre, or stadium is visible; so that the inhabitants of Tenchira must, in all probability, have had the misfortune to be destitute of any place of public amusement. I have remarked with surprise in other parts of the Pentapolis, as well as here, the absence of any well-defined ruins of public baths; though I cannot suppose that any town, even of small size, was in Roman times destitute of so necessary and favourite a luxury. The only hypothesis which presents itself to me as explanatory of this, is the fact, that these towns, as we see them at the present day, belong to the later empire, during whose existence the opposition shown by the bishops and clergy to the delicacy of the bath (balneorum deliciæ) may, in some places, have succeeded in suppressing its use. No place in this country promises a more abundant harvest to the excavator than this: medals must be buried in great quantities, and perhaps other articles of value, among its ruins; and the tombs sunk in the rocks all around are, with those of Benghazi, the only ones in the country that seem to have escaped desecration. All those which were excavated in the quarries have been long since rifled; and even those have not escaped which are now sanded up, as was recently proved, to his great disappointment, by an Arab antiquarian, who, no doubt, having read, adopted Beechey’s suggestion, and employed money, men, and much time, in clearing one of those nearest to the town, on the west side. Beechey, judging from their situation, had conjectured that these tombs were the most ancient; and that, as they had probably been early sanded up, they would offer a good chance of rewarding researches. The event proved that his opinion was incorrect, as the tomb, a large square cavern, was empty of everything but sand; above the door of it is a cross in a circle, with the letters I C . X C. There are tombs cut like troughs on the summits of the rocks on which the quarries are sunk, which yield great numbers of vases, but all that were found, whilst I was there, were of very coarse manufacture. I saw in the hands of an Arab a small fragment of a large and very finely-painted urn of the latest style, and although such are not, of course, common, I believe they are occasionally found. I had intended to spend some days here, and to open a large number of tombs, whose position I had conjectured from the hollow sound the ground above gave out when struck; but the rains had now set in, descending every night in torrents, and frequently lasting all day; so that no working was possible, and in the small tents a dry spot could not be preserved. The discomfort produced by the rain, however, was even exceeded by the destruction it brought to books and instruments; I therefore left Tancra, and firmly resolved that my first purchase in Benghazi should be one of the hair tents of the Arabs, which, though not quite impervious to rain, are yet the best protection one can have against it. As used in this country, they are generally about eighteen feet long, by fifteen broad, the roof formed of long stripes of coarse hair-cloth woven by the women. The roof is sometimes made in white for winter use; but more generally it is of a brown, earthy colour, with stripes of black and white. No cutting out or other fashioning is necessary, for the cloth, being sufficiently elastic, accommodates itself to the slope of the roof. Two poles, three feet apart, support the tent, giving in the centre a height of about seven feet, while the corners and edges are stretched by cords, and supported by slender spars, at about half this height from the ground. Three sides are closed by stripes of the same stuff, rudely attached to the roof by wooden pins, the fourth—that turned to leeward—being left open. In summer, the sides are removed, and branches are used to replace them, while, in general, an older roof is substituted for the better one used in winter. With a little management, they might be made comfortable enough, and, with the exception of the great weight of the hair-cloth of which they are formed, they would be very convenient for travelling, as they are easily set up, are exposed to no accidents which could not be remedied on the spot, and are less liable than cotton tents to rot when packed up wet. Against this evil I have found M‘Gregor’s anti-dry-rot preparation of no use. I have one tent of prepared, and one of unprepared canvas, and have yet found no difference in the condition of their materials.
On the third day after my arrival in Tancra, I reluctantly pursued my journey to Benghazi. In an hour and a quarter we reached Bou Jera’a, which has many gardens and wells. An hour and a half further on lies Birsis, with its few insignificant ruins and its many wells; it afforded one of the pleasantest autumnal scenes I had beheld for a long time: whole villages of tents in quick succession, fields everywhere separated by well-made inclosures, and the whole landscape animated by a busy industry, in which all ages and sexes seemed equally to join. This is the only part of the Pentapolis which has the appearance of being inhabited. The damp, warm air of the morning communicated a sensation of enjoyment to the frame; and the unwonted life of the scene recalled more civilised lands to my mind.
The appearance of the country soon, however, changed; and we entered upon a tract most dreary and desolate. The path winds further inland, being separated from the sea by an extensive marsh, along the edge of which it runs at the foot of low rocks; the dark, stunted vegetation interspersed among the stony wastes gave an air of indescribable melancholy to the landscape. A journey of six hours and a half through this dull flat brought us to Sidi Suaiken, a marābut on an eminence; beyond this the country becomes more wooded, and green meadows appear, in one of which I encamped. There is a place of the name of Handouleh, consisting of a few gardens and rich pastures, which lies about an hour and a half from the marābut; further on to the right is the large salt lake of Ez-zajana, a favourite resort of the Benghazini in their excursions. Near here are extensive ruins, showing only the ground plan of many buildings, which, from the name, are supposed to mark the site of Adrianopolis. Soon after this the road enters the dried sandy bed of the salt lake, which, filled by the winter gales from the sea, gradually evaporates in the course of the summer. At length, we again reached Benghazi, after an absence of rather more than three months.