BENGAZI. 
321 
It has been supposed by Gosselin* and others, that those cele- 
brated gardens of early times (for they are frequently mentioned in 
the plural) were nothing more than some of those Oases, or verdant 
islands, “ which reared their heads amid the sandy desert and, in 
the absence of positive local information, the conjecture was suffi- 
ciently reasonable. 
The accounts which have come down to us of the desert of Barca, 
from the pens of the Arab Historians, would lead us to suppose that 
the country so called (which included not only the territory in ques- 
tion, with the whole of the Pentapolis and Cyrenaica, but also the 
whole tract of coast between Tripoly and Alexandria) was little more 
than a barren tract of sand, scarcely capable of cultivation. Under 
such an impression, we can readily imagine that modern writers 
might be easily deceived ; and when it was necessary to fix the site 
of groves and gardens in the country so erroneously described, we 
may certainly justify them in looking for such places in the only parts 
of a sandy desert where luxuriant vegetation is found, the Oases, or 
verdant islands alluded to. “ Objects here presented themselves” 
(says the learned and ingenious Author of the Discoveries and 
Travels in Africa, in speaking of the western coast of that country, 
where the Hesperides have by some writers been placed) “ which 
acted powerfully on the exalted and poetical imaginations of the 
ancients. They were particularly struck by those Oases, or verdant 
islands, which reared their heads amid the sandy desert. Hence, 
* Geographic Ancienne ; Murray’s account of Discoveries and Travels in Africa, &c. 
