This appears to be more probable when we consider that the title of—_The district of the three cities_—as Tripolis must be translated, would be a very unappropriate term for a single town, although it might be well applied to a department. Such an objection, however, would by no means appear to the Mahometan invaders of the country, who may certainly be imagined to have been ignorant of the language from which the word in question is compounded; and they would discover no reason why the former name of the district might not be a proper one for their new town. We have not been at the pains to search minutely into this question, which would probably receive light from the writers of the Lower Empire; and we offer the conjectures which we have hazarded above, in the absence of more decided information. At the same time, however, it may here be remarked, that the propriety of adopting the word Tripolis, which appears in the printed copies of Ptolemy, is questioned on very good authority. In support of this assertion we need only refer our readers to the Fourth Book of Cellarius, (chap. 3,) where the question is amply discussed; and as the adoption of this reading, instead of that of Leptis Magna, which appears to be decidedly the proper one, would create an endless and unnecessary confusion in the geography of that part of the country which lies between Tripoli Vecchia and Lebida, we have thought it not irrelevant to allude to it[13]. It is perhaps the more necessary that we should do so, as Signor Della Cella has availed himself of the reading above mentioned, and of a passage which he has quoted from Pliny, to identify the modern town of Tripoly with Neapolis; which is too evidently the same town with Leptis Magna (or Lebida), to admit of any similar arrangement[14]. We have by no means any wish to detract from the merits of this gentleman, who deserves every credit for the spirit of inquiry which has led him to encounter the fatigues and privations of a journey like that which he has accomplished. He is the first European who has crossed the Greater Syrtis since the occupation of Northern Africa by the Romans; at least he is the only one that we know of, since that period, who has published any account of such a journey; and he is therefore entitled to the merit of having afforded us the only information which has been given for many centuries of an interesting and extensive tract of country. But as we shall frequently have occasion to refer to his work in the course of the present narrative, we trust that we shall not be suspected of undervaluing its merits, because we may sometimes find it necessary to point out what we conceive to be its errors.