330 
BENGAZL 
reader is — ^whether the subterranean stream above-mentioned, which 
certainly may be said to lose itself underground, be the source of the 
Lethe, or Lathon, in question ? and whether a small spring, which 
runs into the lake near the town of Bengazi, may be supposed to be 
the re-appearance of the same river, in the place so decidedly 
assigned to it by Strabo — the port of the Hesperides, or, which is the 
same, of Berenice. 
The circumstance of finding a subterranean stream in this neigh- 
bourhood, between the mountains and the lake which joins the Har- 
bour of Bengazi, would certainly appear to favour the conclusion, that 
the course of the stream was towards the lake, that is to say, from 
the higher ground to the lower. And although the mere discovery 
of a small stream of fresh water emptying itself into the lake here 
alluded to, does not by any means tend to confirm the existence of a 
communication between it and the subterranean stream in question; 
yet thei’e is no proof (at least, not that we are aware of) that one of 
these is not connected with the other. At the same time we may 
add, that if it were really ascertained that no connexion existed 
between the two, such a circumstance would not be considered as 
proving that the ancients did not suppose that they communicated. 
It was believed by the Greeks (or, at any rate, it was asserted by 
them) that the Alpheus communicated with the fountain of Arethusa, 
and that anything thrown into the former at Elis would re-appear 
on the waters of the latter in Sicily. 
Other instances might be mentioned of similar extravagancies, 
which are considered by the moderns as poetical inventions, and 
