TRIPOLY TO BENGAZI. 
77 
were in the very worst style of the Lower Empire. There are also 
many evidences of the city having been occupied after its first and 
violent destruction, from several of the walls and towers being built 
of various architectural fragments confusedly heaped together. 
Although there are several exceedingly fine brick and cementi- 
tious edifices, most of the walls, arcades, and public buildings, are 
composed of massy blocks of freestone, and conglomerate, in layers, 
without cement, or at most with very little. The temples were 
constructed in a style of the utmost grandeur, adorned with im- 
mense columns of the most valuable granites and marbles, the shafts 
of which consisted of a single piece. Most of these noble ornaments 
were of the Corinthian order ; but I also saw several enormous masses 
of architecture, ornamented with triglyphs, and two or three cyathi- 
form capitals, which led me to suppose that a Doric temple, of 
anterior date, had existed there. On a triple plinth near them I ob- 
served a species of socte, used in some of these structures as the 
base of a column, with part of the walls of the Celia, surrounded by 
a columnar peristyle. 
The city was encompassed by strong walls of solid masonry, pierced 
with magnificent gates, and was ornamented with spacious porticoes, 
sufficient portions of which still remain to prove their former splen- 
dour. It was divided from its principal suburb to the east by a 
river, the mouth of which forming a spacious basin, was the Cothon, 
defended at its narrow entrance by two stout fortifications ; and 
branching out from them, may be observed, under water, the remains 
of two large moles. On the banks of this river, the bed of which is 
