BENGAZI. 
337 
it necessary, an hundred years after Mela, to add, when he speaks of 
the city of Berenice, that it was the same with that of Ilesperis, or, 
as he writes it, Hesperides* ; from which we may infer that the 
ancient name of the place still continued to be better known than the 
modern one. But alas for the glories of Hesperis and Berenice ! 
both names have passed away from the scene of their renown ; and 
the present inhabitants of the miserable dirty village, (for we can 
scarcely call it a town,) which has reared itself on the ruins of these 
cities, have no idea that Bengazi did not always occupy the place 
which it has usurped on the soil of the Hesperides f . 
The Arab who now gathers his corn, or his fruit, in some 
one, perhaps, of those gardens so celebrated in the annals of anti- 
quity, dreams of nothing whatever connected with it beyond the 
profits which he hopes from its produce. He knows nothing of the 
stream or the properties of the Lethe ; and the powerful influence 
of the Biver of Oblivion seems to have been so often, and so success- 
fully exerted, as to have drowned at length even the recollection of 
itself 
* Be^svinn, 'h Kat’KcTrs^i^ss-. 
t The name of Berenice is mentioned by Edrisi as remaining in his time in this part of 
Africa ; but we never could find any traces of the name, though we often inquired for 
it of the Arabs of the country, as well as of the inhabitants of Bengazi. 
J The changes which time may be supposed to effect in the character and appearance 
of a country, are well expressed in the following little fable of Kazwini, translated from 
the Arabic by Silvestre de Sacy. 
“ I passed by a very large and populous city, and inquired of one of its inhabitants 
by whom it was founded. Oh, replied the man, this is a very ancient city ! we have 
no idea how long it may have been in existence ; and our ancestors were on this point 
