CHAPTER IX.
CYRENE.
One of the most famous and flourishing of Greek settlements in distant lands was Cyrenè, on the northern coast of Africa. It occupied a site of rare beauty and fertility, a succession of natural terraces, culminating in a high and spacious table-land, and projecting with a bold curve northwards into the Mediterranean. Thus its position at once gave it the full benefit of the cool sea-breezes, and screened it effectually from the hot and unwholesome winds of the deserts in the interior. The region abounded in streams running down through deep and sheltered gorges to the sea. Both slopes and gorges were clothed in the richest vegetation, and the various elevations of the different ridges produced such differences of climate, that the successive harvests in different parts of the region lasted no less than eight months of the year. Among the many rare and valuable products of Cyrenè, the most important was a plant called Silphium, indigenous to the country, and apparently peculiar to it, whose stalk, root, and
