We may add that the silphium was offered by the people of Cyrene to their first king, Battus, whom they deified, as the most valuable production of their country; and we have already observed that a representation of the plant is found on the reverse of their coins. The resemblance of this representation to the plant which we found in the Cyrenaica is most conspicuous when the plant is young; and before the flower has quite opened, or the stem has attained its greatest height[19]. A little to the north-west of Margàd the road branches off in two directions towards Cyrene. The lower road, or that which is to the northward of the other, is the proper and ancient road; and traces of building are every where discernible in passing along this route, as we were able to ascertain in our return from Cyrene, which will hereafter be described. The southern road, however, is that which Abou-Bukra selected in escorting us from Merge to Grenna; and we afterwards learnt that he had done so in consequence of the feud which he had upon his hands, (already alluded to above,) which rendered it unsafe for him to travel along the road most usually frequented. We had passed the remains of some strongly built forts in our route from Margàd to Cyrene, and after ascending the high ground to the northward of Wady Bo̅o̅kasaishe̅e̅ta we came in sight of the numerous, we might almost say innumerable, tombs which encumber the outskirts of the town. It is well known that the burial-places of the ancients were usually without the walls of their cities; and we find the tombs of Cyrene, (like those of Pompeii and other places,) ranged along the sides of the roads by which the town is approached, and occupying, at the same time, the greater part of the space intervening between one road and another[20]. When we reflect that the inhabitants of this celebrated city have laid their mortal remains on the soil which surrounded it for more than twenty-four centuries, we shall not be surprised at the multitude of tombs which are everywhere scattered over its neighbourhood. They are all of stone, either constructed on the surface, or excavated in the rocky soil of the district; and as most of them have been defaced, or laid in ruins, (for there is not one of them which has not been opened,) the wreck of material with which the soil is encumbered may be more easily imagined than described. The road, when we had descended into the plain of Cyrene, continued to wind through the tombs and sarcophagi, and along the edges of the quarries in which the subterranean tombs have been excavated, for more than a mile and a half; we observed that it was occasionally cut through the rocky soil, and that marks of chariot wheels were still very evident in many parts of its stony surface.