TRIPOLY TO BENGAZI. 
2QS 
have preferred removing their whole establishment to another place, 
which might be better provided with water, to the trouble of 
digging for it where they were. 
It is not only in the works of early writers that we find the nature 
of the Syrtis misunderstood ; for the whole of the space between 
Mesurata and Alexandria is described by Leo Africanus (under the 
title of Barca), as “ a wild and desert country, where there is neither 
water nor land capable of cultivation He allows, however, that the 
country was inhabited, after the occupation of Africa by the Arabs, 
though not before that period ; and tells us, that the most powerful 
among the Mahometan invaders possessed themselves of the fertile 
parts of the coast, leaving the others only the desert for their abode, 
exposed to all the miseries and privations attendant on it : for this 
desert, he continues, is far removed from any habitation, and nothing 
is produced there whatever. So that if these poor people would have 
a supply of grain, or of any other articles necessary to their existence, 
they are obliged to pledge their children to the Sicilians who visit the 
coast ; who on providing them with these things, which they bring 
with them from Sicily, carry off the children they have received. Here 
we have the whole of the Syrtis and Cyrenaica described as a desert 
tract of country ; and although the same author states, that “ Sert 
was an ancient city, built, as some think, by the Egyptians, and, as 
others believe, by the Komans,” he informs us that the country in 
* Una campagna diserta et aspera, dove non si trova ne acqua ne ten-eno da 
coltivare. — (Leo Afr. in Ram. 5“ parte, p. 72.) 
