MERGE TO GYRENE. 
539 
to the attack of an enemy. Several parts of the wall have been 
excavated in the rocky soil on which they stood, and building only 
employed where the rock was not sufficiently high to render it 
unnecessary. It should be stated, that the masses of rock here 
alluded to were not of the nature of a cliff, but detached masses 
rising in irregular forms as well from within as without the walls. It 
is evident, as will appear by the plan of the city, that the line of 
wall was continued round the large reservoirs above mentioned, so as 
to inclose them completely within its limits, a precaution which might 
naturally be expected in a climate where water is so valuable. If the 
winter rains should fail, which we should scarcely think possible at 
Cyrene, these cisterns might have been filled from the aqueduct 
which communicated with the principal fountain, for although it 
only extended across the high ground to the westward of the town, 
there are traces of conduits, or water-courses, in every part of the 
city, leading towards the place on which it has been built. 
We ought not to omit on this occasion a few remarks which are 
necessary on the subject of the reservoirs here alluded to, as they 
may serve to explain an error into which Signor Della CeUa appears 
to have fallen, with respect to the inscriptions which he found in 
them. He has informed us, that these inscriptions were in a language 
altogether unknown to us, each stone. of the interior wall bearing a 
separate letter, so that the inscriptions continued, in parallels with the 
ranges of stone, along the whole length of the buildings in question. 
The partial absence of light, and the immediate presence of water in 
these spacious and gloomy subterranean inclosures, appear to have 
3 z 2 
