A Visit to Cyrene in 1895

Abstract

The difficulties that hedged round the Garden of the Hesperides in the Greek seem still destined to make the Cyrenaica, a country to which the eyes of archæologists have so wistfully turned, almost as inaccessible to the modern traveller as to the heroes of ancient fable. The classic maidens have vanished, the Garden is somewhat run to seed, but the dragon of early legend is there, in the person of the native official who guards the historical treasures that lie strewn over the rich sites of the Pentapolis, stately tombs that worthless Arabs kennel in or plunder for statues and vases, to be peddled to Maltese or Greeks for (literally) home consumption or foreign export.