The interior country, stretching westward from Egypt along the thirtieth and thirty-first parallel of latitude, to the Great Syrtis, and then along the southern shore of that gulf, is to a great degree low and sandy, and quite destitute of trees; yet affording in many parts water, herbage, and a fertile soil.[72] But the maritime region north of this, constituting the projecting bosom of the African coast from the island of Platea (Gulf of Bomba) on the east to Hesperides (Bengazi) on the west, is of a totally different character; covered with mountains of considerable elevation, which reach their highest point near Kyrênê, interspersed with productive plain and valley, broken by frequent ravines which carry off the winter torrents into the sea, and never at any time of the year destitute of water. It is this latter advantage that causes them to be now visited every summer by the Bedouin Arabs, who flock to the inexhaustible Fountain of Apollo and to other parts of the mountainous region from Kyrênê to Hesperides, when their supply of water and herbage fails in the interior:[73] and the same circumstance must have operated in ancient times to hold the nomadic Libyans in a sort of dependence on Kyrênê and Barka. Kyrênê appropriated the maritime portion of the territory of the Libyan Asbystæ;[74] the Auschisæ occupied the region south of Barka, touching the sea near Hesperides,—the Kabales near Teucheira in the territory of Barka. Over the interior spaces these Libyan Nomads, with their cattle and twisted tents, wandered unrestrained, amply fed upon meat and milk,[75] clothed in goatskins, and enjoying better health than any people known to Herodotus. Their breed of horses was excellent, and their chariots or wagons with four horses could perform feats admired even by Greeks: it was to these horses that the princes[76] and magnates of Kyrênê and Barka often owed the success of their chariots in the games of Greece. The Libyan Nasamônes, leaving their cattle near the sea, were in the habit of making an annual journey up the country to the Oasis of Augila, for the purpose of gathering the date-harvest,[77] or of purchasing dates,—a journey which the Bedouin Arabs from Bengazi still make annually, carrying up their wheat and barley, for the same purpose. Each of the Libyan tribes was distinguished by a distinct mode of cutting the hair, and by some peculiarities of religious worship, though generally all worshipped the Sun and the Moon.[78] But in the neighborhood of the Lake Tritônis (seemingly the western extremity of Grecian coasting trade in the time of Herodotus, who knows little beyond, and begins to appeal to Carthaginian authorities), the Grecian deities Poseidôn and Athênê, together with the legend of Jason and the Argonauts, had been localized. There were, moreover, current prophecies announcing that one hundred Hellenic cities were destined one day to be founded round the lake,—and that one city in the island Phla, surrounded