The circumstance of finding a subterranean stream in this neighbourhood, between the mountains and the lake which joins the Harbour of Bengazi, would certainly appear to favour the conclusion, that the course of the stream was towards the lake, that is to say, from the higher ground to the lower. And although the mere discovery of a small stream of fresh water emptying itself into the lake here alluded to, does not by any means tend to confirm the existence of a communication between it and the subterranean stream in question; yet there is no proof (at least, not that we are aware of) that one of these is not connected with the other. At the same time we may add, that if it were really ascertained that no connexion existed between the two, such a circumstance would not be considered as proving that the ancients did not suppose that they communicated. It was believed by the Greeks (or, at any rate, it was asserted by them) that the Alpheus communicated with the fountain of Arethusa, and that anything thrown into the former at Elis would re-appear on the waters of the latter in Sicily. Other instances might be mentioned of similar extravagancies, which are considered by the moderns as poetical inventions, and never received as historical facts. The disappearance of the Lathon, and its subsequent rise, might have been equally a poetical fiction; but when we find, in the country in which it was placed, a large body of water which actually loses itself, we are naturally led to believe one part of the assertion, and to seek to identify the actual subterranean stream with that which is said to have existed. On a reference to the authority of geographers and historians, we find a river called Lathon laid down very clearly in the place where this body of water is found, and we remark that the name which they apply to the river signifies _hidden_ or _concealed_. So far there is a probability that the Lathon of the ancients and the subterranean stream in the neighbourhood of Bengazi may be one and the same river.