PTOLEMETA TO MERGE. 
397 
been different places As the distance of Scylax from the port to 
the city of Barca is given in distance from the sea, we must look for 
the latter (supposing the one hundred stadia to be correct, which we 
have no sufficient reason to doubt) in some part of that range of 
mountains which bounds the country between Bengazi and Ptolemeta 
to the southward; and it appears extremely probable, that its site 
should be fixed for in some part of the plain of Merge : it may be, 
in the remains which have already been mentioned in the south- 
eastern part of the valley. Here, however, a considerable difficulty 
occurs, of the accounts of the city of Barca, which are given by early 
Arab writers, are at all to be depended upon as correct ; for although 
these accounts, in many respects, will be found to be extremely unsa- 
tisfactory, they all appear to concur in placing the city in the neigh- 
bourhood of a mountainous country, but, at the same time, rather in 
a plain at the foot of it than in any part of the mountains themselves. 
The distance, however, of Barca from the coast unavoidably places it 
in some part of the range which we have mentioned ; for there is no 
part of the plain between this range and the sea, (as will clearly ap- 
pear by the chart,) which is distant anything like one hundred stadia 
from the coast, with the exception of that to the southward of Ben- 
gazi ; and to suppose the town of Barca there would be absurd, for it 
would then be fifty miles distant from its port and only nine or ten 
from the more convenient harbour of Berenice. Edrisi has given us 
several distances to and from Barca; as — from Barca to Angela ten 
^ E)£ Se Xi/xHvor rnr "Kifx.svos tov Kocra Ba^xvv araSia (p', •h Se tioKis Ba§xs<wv 
a.710 ’bxXa.airts aracoix g. (Perip. p. 109.) 
