196 
JOURNEY FROM 
For ourselves, we are content to believe that the plant laserpitium, 
or silphium, was really sold, or rather bartered, at Charax, as well as 
the liquor which was extracted from it. We will however agree with 
Signor Della Celia in deferring any further remarks on the silphium 
till we find ourselves in the country which produced it ; and will in 
the mean time proceed with our journey along the shores of the 
Syrtis. 
Soon after passing the several mounds which we have suggested as 
the probable remains of Charax, we arrived at the wells of Hudia ; 
a name which the Arabs suppose to have been given to this place 
in consequence of the bad water usually found there, and which they 
consider to be only fit for Jews ; the Arab term for a Jew being 
Hudi, and the Jews themselves little esteemed by Mahometans. 
We will not however venture to attribute this origin to the term 
by which the place is distinguished, although it is by no means 
improbable that the name may have a reference to the persecuted 
people who are here so contemptuously alluded to. We know that 
the Jews were formerly very numerous in the Pentapolis, and we 
find them described by Procopius as having once inhabited the 
country on its western extremity *. Hudia may in such case be 
the last settlement they possessed in this neighbourhood, and the 
place may very probably have received its appellation from that cir- 
cumstance. 
There being no other resting-place at less than a whole day’s 
journey from Hudia, we pitched our tents for the night near the 
• De iEdificiis, lib. v. p. 110-li. Par. fol. 1663. 
