434 
MERGE TO GYRENE. 
so more rapidly, each descent being quickly succeeded by another, 
till they finish altogether at the foot of the mountain. 
The position of Cyrene is, in fact, on the edge of a range of hills of 
about eight hundred feet in height, descending in galleries, one below 
another, till they are terminated by the level ground which forms the 
summit of a second range beneath it. At the foot of the upper 
range, on which the city was built, is a fine sweep of table-land most 
beautifully varied with wood, among which are scattered tracts of 
barley and corn, and meadows which are covered for a great part 
of the year with verdure. Kavines, whose sides are thickly covered 
with trees, intersect the country in various directions, and form the 
channels of the mountain-streams in their passage from the upper 
range to the sea. The varied tract of table-land of which we are 
speaking extends itself east and west as far as the eye can reach ; and 
to the northward (after stretching about five miles in that direction) 
it descends abruptly to the sea. The lower chain, which runs all along 
the coast of the Cyrenaica, is here, as it is at Ptolemeta and other 
places, thickly covered with wood, and intersected, like the upper range, 
with wild and romantic ravines; which assume grander features as 
they approach the sea. The height of the lower chain may be esti- 
mated at a thousand feet, and Cyrene, as situated on the summit of 
the upper one, is elevated about eighteen hundred feet from the level 
of the sea, of which it commands an extensive view over the top of 
the range below it*. For a day or two after our first arrival at 
* The height of the upper range from the level of the sea, as obtained by Captain 
Smyth from a sea base, was 1575 feet. — The dip of the visible sea horizon, x'epeatedly 
