TRIPOLY TO BENGAZI. 
■253 
surrounded, and which it was necessary to cross before they entered 
the town ; the rains which had already fallen had swelled it more 
than the Chaous had anticipated, and the darkness of the night ren- 
dered it difficult for him to find the spot at which it was necessary 
to ford it. After wandering about the banks for some little time in 
uncertainty, and trying several plans without success, they at length 
reached the opposite shore ; though not before their horses had 
plunged into several holes, from which they could only extricate 
themselves by swimming. On the following day our whole party 
arrived at Bengazi, and were received with every mark of attention 
and politeness by Signor Bossoni, the British Vice-Consul, to whom 
the necessary instructions from Mr. Consul Warrington had already 
been forwarded. We found that Signor Rossoni ^vas already in treaty 
for the house of an Arab Shekh, one of the best which the place 
afforded, and only waited our arrival to arrange the terms on which 
we were willing to take it : these were soon settled, and we took 
possession of our new abode the day after our arrival in the town, 
and began to make ourselves as comfortable as circumstances would 
allow, under the disadvantages of a rainy winter, at Bengazi. 
Bengazi is allowed to have been built upon the site once occupied 
by the town of Berenice, the most western city of the Pentapolis ; 
but before we proceed to describe this part of the Cyrenaica, it will 
be proper to look back upon the tract of country already before the 
reader, and, in taking a general view of the gulf and shores of the 
Greater Syrtis, to bring together some of the most prominent 
remarks of ancient writers respecting it. 
