398 Foreign Notices. — Africa. 



more than common occurrences. Baron Humboldt and Mr. Bullock have 

 reduced the floating gardens of Mexico to mud banks, with ditches be- 

 tween ; and Lieutenant Beechey makes it appear, that the gardens of the 

 Hesperides are nothing more than old stone-quarries, the bottoms of which 

 have been cultivated. 



Besides deep quarries, whence the cities of old were constructed, Mr 

 Beechey tell us, " 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, enclosed 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 little secluded spots, protected, as it were, from the 

 intrusion of mankind by the steepness and the depth of the barriers which 

 enclose them, is singular and pleasing in the extreme. It was impossible to 

 walk round the edge of these precipices, looking every where 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 enclosed spot of about one fifth of a British mile 

 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 620 stadia (or 50 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. 



" We have shown that the nature of the ground, in the neighbourhood 

 of Berenice (or Bengazi), is consistent with the account of Scylax ; and that 

 places like those which he has so minutely described, are actually to be 

 found in the ten-itory where he has laid down the gardens. This singular 

 formation, as far as we have seen, is also peculiar to the country in ques- 

 tion ; 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 cor 

 respond, 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 j 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. The remarkable peculiarities of this 

 pai't of northern Africa correspond (in our opinion) sufficiently well with 

 the authorities already quoted, to authorise the conclusion we have drawn 

 from an inspection of the place ; and to induce us to place the gardens of 



