Nothing is more just than the picture of human nature here presented to us by the intelligent writer just quoted; and it must be confessed that the position of the Hesperian gardens has been fixed by different authors in so many parts of the coast of Africa, that we may scarcely hope to reconcile statements so opposite. The legends connected with these celebrated places are at the same time so wild and extravagant, as well as so discordant with each other, that we might often be tempted to consider the gardens themselves as fabulous and imaginary spots, existing only in the creative brain of the poet and the mythologist, and nowhere to be found in reality. We should not, however, say, from our view of the subject, that “the variety of position” assigned to the gardens of the Hesperides “is referrible to no precise geographical _data_:” the details which we have already quoted from Scylax are too minute to be wholly rejected; and the position of the gardens, as laid down by Ptolemy and Pliny, coincides with that assigned to them by Scylax. We have shewn, at the same time, that the nature of the ground in the neighbourhood of Berenice (or Bengazi) is consistent with the account of Scylax; and that places like those which he has so minutely described are actually to be found in the territory where he has laid down the gardens. This singular formation, so far as we have seen, is also peculiar to the country in question; and we know of no other part of the coast of northern Africa where the same peculiarities of soil are observable. We do not mean to point out any _one_ of these subterranean gardens as that which is described in the passage above quoted from Scylax; for we know of no one which will correspond in point of extent to the garden which this author has mentioned: all those which we saw were considerably less than the fifth of a mile in diameter (the measurement given by Scylax); and the places of this nature which would best agree with the dimensions in question, are now filled with water sufficiently fresh to be drinkable, and take the form of romantic little lakes.