The greater part of the town, on our first visits to it, was thickly overgrown with wild marigolds and camomile, to a height of four and five feet, and patches of corn were here and there observable growing equally within the city walls[17]. The solitude of the place was at the same time unbroken by animals of any description; if we except a small number of jackals and hyænas, which strayed down after sunset in search of water, and a few owls and bats which started out from the ruins as we disturbed them by our near and unexpected approach. Appeals of this kind are always irresistible; and the contrast which presented itself between the silence and desolation which characterized the city of Ptolemeta when we visited it, and the busy scene which a spectator of its former wealth and magnificence would have witnessed under the Ptolemies and the Cæsars, afforded a striking and, we must say, a melancholy example of the uncertainty of all human greatness. If the exuberant vegetation we have mentioned appeared to be rather out of its place, it was not less a source of inconvenience than regret, for we had the pleasure of being obliged to wade through it up to our arm-pits in making our way to the different buildings; and it may readily be imagined that this tiresome operation, after the heavy rains which fell occasionally at night, was no treat on a cool cloudy morning. The brushing through a turnip field, or one of mangel-wurzel, which many of our readers have no doubt often tried with a double-barrelled gun upon their shoulders, is nothing to the tramping we have mentioned; for not only our boots and trowsers were quickly wet through with the heavy drops which we brushed from their lodgments, but our shirt-sleeves and jackets, and sometimes even our turbans, were also well soaked on these occasions. A very different scene presented itself on our return from Cyrene, when the summer heat had begun to exert its influence. Not a leaf or a stalk remained of all the impediments we have alluded to, and the prevailing colour of the place, which we had left a bright green, had been succeeded by a dusky brown. The corn had been cut and carried, leaving scarcely any traces of its having been formerly growing; and the ruins were left exposed, in all their naked desolation, glaring on the eye of the spectator. We had now to encounter inconveniences of a very different nature from those which had originally presented themselves; but although they were by no means less disagreeable, we had reason to rejoice in the exchange. No impediment now remained to obstruct our approach to, or to prevent our view of the buildings, and we were able to trace the plans of them with much greater ease and accuracy than we could on the former occasions. Having given a general view of the country and remains between Bengazi and Ptolemeta, we will now retrace our steps, and notice a few of the ruins which present themselves in the route with somewhat more attention to detail.