in the year. It is affirmed, that Latona was born there, and that 

 therefore the worship of Apollo is preferred to that of any other ' 

 god. And as they daily celebrate this deity with songs of praise, 

 and worship him with the highest honours, they are considered as pe- 

 culiarly the priests of Apollo, whose sacred grove and singular temple 

 of round form, endowed with many gifts, are there. They have a 

 city also consecrated to this divinity. Most of the citizens are harpers, 

 who, striking their harps in the temple, sing sacred hymns to the god, 

 in which his actions are proclaimed with suitable honour. Their lan- 

 guage is that peculiar to the Hyperboreans, and they are attached to 

 the Greeks by a singular affection confirmed from old times. The Athe- 

 nians and Delians are the principal objects of this regard, the ground 

 of which, according to this people, is, that, as some Greeks formed}^ 

 sailed over to the Hyperborean regions, and left offerings which 

 were noted in Greek letters, so Abaris voyaged thence to Greece, 

 and renewed with the Delians the tie of ancient friendship and ac- 

 quaintance. They likewise aver, that the moon is so seen from this 

 island, that it appears not so distant from the earth, and seems to pre- 

 sent on its face certain projections like the mountains of our world; 

 also, that the god Apollo himself visits the island once in nineteen 

 If ears, in which space the stars complete their revolutions, and return 

 into their old positions, and hence this cycle of nineteen years is 

 called by the Greeks the great year. This deity, when he does so ap- 

 pear, is said to sing with the harp at night, and to stimulate the dances 

 continually from the vernal equinox to the rising of the Pleiades, 

 delighting himself with the commemoration of his own great actions." 

 Rowlands, it is true, in his History of Anglesea, applies the above 

 passage to that island, and Toland,* as well as Carte,*f- assumes 



* Vol. 1. p. 161. t Gen, Hist. vol. 1. p. 53. 



VOL. XVI. M 



