570 
MERGE TO GYRENE. 
away for several feet upwards. We may infer from these appear- 
ances, that in the rainy season the body of water which rushes along 
Wady Jerahib must be very great ; and to avoid the inconvenience 
to which travellers would in consequence have been exposed, we find 
the ancient road raised several feet above the actual level of the 
wady in other parts, and occasionally paved, and cut through the 
rock. At its western extremity. Wady Jerahib opens out into a very 
spacious and beautiful, we may say without exaggeration, a magni- 
ficent valley : at the entrance of which are the remains of a very 
large fort, now called by the Arabs Beliggidem ; the walls of this are 
still upwards of forty feet in height. Other valleys are seen from the 
fort, stretching out far into the blue horizon ; and we looked on all 
sides over the tops of thick forests of pine, which covered the sides and 
the summit of the wadies, as far as the eye could reach. Beliggidem 
may be called a very good day’s journey from Gyrene, which would 
more frequently, indeed, be extended to a day and a half. The road 
from hence winds through a succession of wadies, and we found it to 
be very indifferent ; till, after ascending a difficult hill, it brought us 
once more to Margad, — a spot at which we had stopped for the night 
on our journey froin Merge to Gyrene. From this place, our former 
conductor, Boo-Bukra, had turned off abruptly to the southward, in 
order to avoid passing through BelSnege (a part of the road which 
we had taken in returning), where he understood that the relations 
of two men whom he had killed were lying in wait for him. The 
party in advance had learnt this from an Arab at Belenege ; and it 
enabled us to account for the circuitous and difficult route along 
