Our route on the following day lay over a barren and rugged country, which continues all the way from Hudīa to the confines of Barca, where the soil begins gradually to assume a better appearance. In the afternoon, as we passed Mahirīga, we observed the remains of a quadrangular building occupying the summit of a low range of hills which lay between our road and the sea. On a closer examination, we found it to be different in plan from any building which we had hitherto met with. At each of the angles there is a circular turret, sloping down from the top, and becoming considerably wider at the base. The sides of this building are constructed with well-shaped stones of four and five feet in length, closely fitted together, and fastened with an excellent cement; but the turrets were found to be built of much smaller stones, not shaped or put together with the same attention to regularity, and proved on near inspection to be built _on_ to the outer walls and not into them. They may therefore be considered as forming no part of the original plan, and have probably been added at some early period by the Arabs. No traces remain of the external roof of this building, but part of an arched roof is still visible on the ground-floor within, which, from its inferior workmanship, we should be inclined to attribute to the same period at which the turrets were added. Traces of walls are also seen in the inside of the building, which have formerly divided it into chambers; they are composed of very small stones and appear to be of later work than the exterior. This fortress, for such it has originally been, is surrounded by a wall of four feet in thickness, enclosing an area of twenty five feet between it and the outer wall of the building, but there is no appearance of any trench. The enclosed space is entered by a single gate in the wall which surrounds it, but no appearance whatever of any entrance is observable in the walls of the building; and we must therefore conclude that there was some subterranean communication with it from without, or that they who entered were drawn up with ropes by persons already stationed in the fortress; as we have already observed to be the case in other fortified buildings in the Syrtis. There are traces of other walls about this building in different directions, and the whole brow of the hill on which it stands appears to have been formerly enclosed; below this, to the northward, is a well, built in the soil, of not more than two feet square, which is now filled up with rubbish to within five feet of the surface, and near it are traces of another well, and some large building-stones apparently little out of their places. The present height of the turrets and outer walls of the fort are about fifteen feet; and were it not for the dilapidated condition of the former, the entrance would not be easy without a ladder.