The region of the Cinyphus has been celebrated for its extraordinary fertility; Herodotus asserts that it yielded three hundred for one, and other writers have concurred in extolling the richness of its soil[24]. It is remarkable, however, that some authors who have highly commended the soil of the Byzacium, have, at the same time, omitted to notice the fertility of the region of the Cinyphus; while others, on the contrary, who have recorded the extraordinary produce of the district last mentioned, have failed to make any allusion to the productive qualities of the Byzacium. This circumstance has induced Dr. Della Cella to imagine that some of the writers in question intended to include both these districts in one; and in support of this idea he cites passages from Pliny and Strabo, which appear to him decisive in its favour. Pliny says (it is Dr. Della Cella who speaks) that “the people who inhabit the Byzacium are called Libyphœnices[25];” it is therefore only necessary to ascertain in what country the Libyphœnices dwelt, to determine the position of the Byzacium[26]. And here, continues the Doctor, is a very clear reply of Strabo to this desideratum of ancient geography—“Upon the sea-coast, extending from Carthage to the Cephalas Promontorium, and to the _Masselibii_[27], is the territory of the Libyphœnices.” But it will scarcely, we imagine, be thought absolutely necessary to conclude, that, because Byzacium may have formed a _part_ of the territory of the Libyphœnices, the _whole_ of the country inhabited by these people must therefore be called Byzacium; for Strabo himself has informed us that the Byzacians extended only to the _eastern_ limits of Carthage (that is, of Carthage Proper, or Zeugitana); whereas the tract which he has assigned to the Libyphœnices generally, comprehended the whole of the Carthagenian territory, from the Cephalas Promontorium to the country of the Massæsyli. The Massæsyli were a people of Numidia, and their district formed the _western_ boundary of that country and Mauretania; so that between them and the Byzacians (whom we may, surely, conclude to be the inhabitants of the country from which their name is derived) the whole of Numidia and Carthage Proper intervenes. The Libyphœnices appear to have been the descendants of the Phœnicians (or Carthaginians) and of the several native African, or Libyan, tribes in their neighbourhood; so that Byzacium would naturally be peopled by them to a considerable extent, without its being necessary to infer from that circumstance that all Libyphœnices were Byzacians. We may add that Strabo does not seem to be aware of any fertility in the soil of the Byzacium; for he continues to state (after the passage above quoted from the Second Book of his Geography) that all the country between Carthage and the _columns of Hercules_ is fertile—not including, of course, either the Byzacium, or the region of the Cinyphus[28].