512 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [chap. 



When this fruit is ripe, they strain it through a cloth, and the 

 juice which flows from it is thick and black and called ascky. 

 This juice they suck or drink mixed with milk, and of the 

 pressed fruits they make cakes which they eat ; for they have 

 not many cattle because the pasture is poor. ... As far as to these 

 bald people the land is now sufficiently well known, also the 

 races on this side of them, because they are visited by Scythians. 

 From them it is not difficult to collect information, which is 

 also to be had from the Greeks at the port of the Borysthenes 

 and other ports in Pontus. The Scythians who travel thither 

 do business with the assistance of seven interpreters in seven 

 languages. So far our knowledge extends. But of the land on 

 the other side of the bald men none can give any trustworthy 

 account because it is shut off by a separating wall of lofty track- 

 less mountains, which no man can cross. But these bald men 

 say — which, however, I do not believe — that men with goat's 

 feet live on the mountains, and on the other side of them other 

 men who sleep six months at a time. The latter statement, 

 however, I cannot at all admit. On the other hand, the land east 

 of the bald men, in which the Issedones live, is well known, but 

 what is farther to the north, both on the other side of the bald 

 men and of the Issedones, is only known by the statements of 

 these tribes. . . . Above the Issedones live the one-eyed men, 

 and the gold-guarding griffins. This information the Scythians 

 have got from the Issedones and we from the Scythians, and we 

 call the one-eyed race by the Scythian name Arimaspi, for in the 

 Scythian language arima signifies one and sjwu the eye. The 

 whole of the country which I have been speaking of has so hard 

 and severe a winter, that there j^revails there for eight months 

 an altogether insupportable cold, so that if you pour water on 

 the ground you will not make mud, bvit if you light a fire you 

 will make mud. Even the sea freezes, and the whole Ciinmerian 

 Bosphorus, and the Scythians who live within the trench travel 

 on the ice and drive over it in waggons. . . . Again, with refer- 

 ence to the feathers with which the Scythians say the air is filled, 

 and which prevent the whole land lying beyond from being seen 

 or travelled through, I entertain the following oi^inion. In the 

 upper parts of this country it snows continually, but, as is natural, 

 less in summer than in winter. And whoever has seen snow 

 falling thick near him will know what I mean. For snow re- 

 sembles feathers, and on account of the winter being so severe 

 the northern j)arts of this continent cannot be inhabited. I 

 believe then that the Scythians and their neighbours called 

 snow feathers, on account of the resemblance between them. 

 This is what is stated regarding the most remote regions." 



These and other similar statements, notwithstanding the 



