136 VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES. 



ting and tearing and forcing our little punt through 

 or over this matting of plants and flowers, we at last 

 shot into the clear basin of the Cyanean fountain, 

 well bathed with perspiration and its own waters. 

 This famous fountain, which, coming by the winding 

 course of the stream that flows from it, may be 

 somewhat more than half a mile from the Anapus, is 

 a circular pool of from sixty to seventy feet in diame- 

 ter. Its waters, though the bottom of the basin 

 seems formed of black mud, are remarkably pure, 

 and so transparent that you can see the fish (which 

 swarm there) and any other object far beneath their 

 surface, as clearly as if you looked through the me- 

 dium of a clear atmosphere. According to our mea- 

 surement the fountain was then thirty-two feet deep ; 

 it was fringed all round with the graceful cyperus 

 papyrus. Nothing remained of the ancient temple 

 of Cyane except some blocks of marble that had fallen 

 or been thrown into the fountain. Even the name 

 of Cyane was no longer known there, the Syracusans 

 calling the fountain and the stream La Pisma. 



'* Few spots could be more solitary and still the 

 limpid water flowed without a ripple, nor were any 

 sounds heard except the occasional twitter of a sort 

 of reed-sparrow, and now and then the rustling of 

 the hig'h papyrus and other aquatic plants, as they 

 were shaken by a breath of summer air, or agitated 

 by the fish gliding among their roots. The papyri 

 fringing the pool seemed literally to float upon its 

 tranquil waters ; their principal root, which is large 

 and bulbous, running horizontally at the surface of 

 the stream, and long slender filaments depending 

 perpendicularly from it, like so many little cables to 

 keep it at anchor. The shaft or stem proceeding 

 from this root was frequently ten feet high, without 

 measuring the flowering tuft in which it terminated. 



" From some of them which we cut down and 

 carried away with us, we easily made a sort of paper. 



