Starting from here the following day, we soon became aware that the country was not so thinly inhabited as we had thought; for numerous herds covered the rich pasture-grounds, while droves of gazelles, now and then, attested that the industry of man did not encroach here upon the freedom of the various orders of creation. Leaving the path near the ruins of a small building situated upon a hill, I went with Tayyef and the Khalífa to visit the ruins of a Roman station on the border of the Bahéra, which, under the name of el Medaina, has a great fame amongst the neighbouring tribes, but which, with a single exception, are of small extent and bad workmanship. This exception is the quay, which is not only of interest in itself, formed as it is of regularly-hewn stones, in good repair, but of importance as an evident proof that the lake was much deeper in ancient times than it is now. Traversing from this spot the sebkha, which our companions had gone round, we soon overtook them, and kept over fine pasture-grounds called el Fehén, and further on, Súllub, passing, a little after noon, a group of ruins near the shore, called Kitfi el hamár. At two o’clock in the afternoon, we had directly on our right a slight slope which, according to the unanimous statement of our guides and companions, forms the mágttʿa, مَقْطَعٌ, or frontier between the two regencies[8]; and keeping along it we encamped an hour afterwards between the slope and the shore, which a little further on forms the deep gulf called Mirsá Buréka. [Sidenote: January 16th.] Starting at an early hour, we reached after a march of ten miles the ruins of a castle on the sea-shore, called Búrj el Melha, to which those of a small village, likewise built of hewn stone, are joined, while a long and imposing mole called el Míná juts out into the gulf. Four and a half miles further on we reached the conspicuous hill on the top of which is the chapel of the saint Sidi Sʿaid ben Salah, sometimes called Sidi Gházi, and venerated by such of the natives as are not attached to the Puritan sect of El Mádani, of which I shall speak hereafter. All our companions went there to say a short prayer.