It appears to be chiefly from Leo Africanus that modern historians have derived the very unfavourable idea of what they term the district and desert of Barca. Yet the whole of the Cyrenaica is comprehended within the limits which they assign to it; and the authority of Herodotus (without citing any other) would be amply sufficient to prove that this tract of country, not only was no desert, but was at all times remarkable for its fertility. We find on the same authority, that the Libyans (or Africans) who inhabited, at an early period, the southern shores of the Mediterranean, were divided into pastoral and agricultural tribes; and that the former, most of whom were inhabitants of Barca, were by no means in the miserable condition in which they have been by some represented. They are described by Herodotus as living on flesh and milk; and the prejudice which they entertained for what Englishmen would term cow-beef, could scarcely have existed among a people who were scantily provided with the necessaries of life[13]. With regard to the present inhabitants of the district of Barca (we mean the part of it comprehended in the Syrtis and Cyrenaica), we should certainly call them a healthy and good-looking race; and not at all the ugly, meagre, grim-visaged people, which they have been described to be in some of our best received accounts of them. We allude in particular to the Bedouin (or wandering) tribes, which are those more immediately in question; and who are generally a finer people, both in character and appearance, than what are termed the more civilized inhabitants of Arab cities. Whatever may be the descent of the present inhabitants of this part of Africa, they appear to lead exactly the same kind of life, and to have as nearly as possible the same resources, as the early possessors of the regions which they occupy. The penetration of Herodotus has not failed to discover among the African tribes which he enumerates, that they were a very healthy race of people; and the practice of cautery, still adopted by their Mahometan successors, and to which he is uncertain whether or not to attribute the healthy appearance of the Libyans, is mentioned by this author as one of their peculiarities[14]. No allusion is made by Herodotus to the parched and barren sandy soil which later writers have bestowed upon the country in question, described by Leo Africanus as a region “dove non si trova ne acqua ne terreno da cultivare;” and we may safely affirm that the impression left upon our minds of this part of the coast and its inhabitants (after reading the account of Herodotus) would be much more consistent with the appearance and peculiarities of both, in their actual state, than that which would result from the descriptions of any succeeding writer.