568 
MERGE TO GYRENE. 
wells of excellent water, apparently of ancient construction ; and 
observed remains of building on a rising ground adjoining, and some 
tombs excavated in the rock. An hour more, travelling along the 
brow of the ridge, brought us to Marabut Sidi Arafi, the division 
between the territories of Derna and Bengazi. Here also we found 
several wells, and partial remains of building, which continued all 
the way along the road to Birasa, where their number considerably 
increased. This has evidently been an ancient site ; and we have 
no doubt that the whole of the country, through which we this day 
travelled, was once very thickly inhabited. Traces of ancient pave- 
ment are continually met with on the road, which is occasionally 
flanked by ancient tombs, similar in construction to some of those at 
Cyrene, and every pass of importance has been fortified with towers 
of considerable strength *. 
* The name of Birasa will naturally suggest a resemblance between it and Irasa, 
the country which is mentioned by Herodotus as that to which the Greeks were conducted 
by the natives of Libya. We do not mean to infer, that the place first mentioned has 
any other connexion with the territory upon which Cyrene was erected, than that which 
we are going to suggest ; but if the affinity of the Arabic and Hebrew, or Chaldee, to 
the old Phoenician, or Samaritan language, (an early dialect of the Hebrew,) be really 
so great as is generally allowed, the two words in question may bear the same meaning 
without any forced application. The word ras in Arabic, and in Hebrew, signifies a 
head ; and the term is constantly applied by the Arabs to high and mountainous ground, 
whether inland or on the coast : land on the summit of a mountain may therefore be said 
to be — hi-ras — upon the head, or high ground ; and bi-rcis-a would signify, in Arabic, 
as it does in the case of the teri’itory in question — a tract of land on the upper part of a 
range of hills — and might be applied w'ithout any impropriety to a similar tract of land 
of whatever extent. It is not, perhaps, improbable that ras had the same meaning among 
the Libyan tribes, (whom we may suppose to have spoken some dialect of the old 
Phoenician,) as it bears in Arabic and Hebrew ; and that the particle bi or be, was at 
