346 
BENGAZI. 
cora and Bengazi : two of our party had before made a trip, along 
the coast, to Ptolemeta, and returned in high spirits with what they 
had met with in that dehghtful part of the Pentapolis. On our 
route to Carcora we had been very much annoyed with a violent and 
parching sirocco wind, the heat of which would have been sufficiently 
disagreeable and oppressive, without the extreme annoyance of thick 
clouds of sand, whirling everywhere in eddies about us, which were 
driven with such force into our eyes as almost to prevent our making 
use of them. 
Having completed the unfinished part of the coast-fine, we re- 
turned back to Bengazi, and found everything prepared for our jour- 
ney to the eastward, through the diligence and activity of Lieutenant 
Coffin, who had been left at Bengazi for that purpose. During our 
absence at Carcora, Bey Halil had left the town, and pitched his tents 
in the fine plain of Merge, a large tract of table-land on the top of 
the mountains which bound Teuchira and Ptolemeta to the south- 
ward. The object of his journey was to collect the tribute from the 
neighbouring Bedouin tribes, and this is generally a work of much 
time and trouble, without which the contribution would not be paid 
at all. We had previously arranged with him that Hadood, Shekh 
of Barka, should have camels in readiness (on our return from Car- 
cora) to carry our tents and baggage to the westward ; but finding 
they had not arrived, we with difficulty procured others, and set out 
from Bengazi on the seventeenth of April for Teuchira, Ptolemeta, 
and Cyren6. 
The road from Bengazi to Teuchira and Ptolemeta lies through a 
