BOOK XVI. I. 3-II. 5 



patches of ground or platforms biiilt up by hand 

 above the level of the highest tide experienced, 

 Hving in huts erected on the sites so chosen, and 

 resembUng sailors in ships when the water covers the 

 surrounding land, but shipwrecked people when the 

 tide has retired, and round their huts they catch the 

 fish escaping with the receding tide. It does not 

 fall to them to keep herds and hve on milk hke the 

 neighbouring tribes, nor even to have to fight with 

 wild animals, as all woodland growth is banished 

 far away. They twine ropes of sedge and rushes 

 from the marshes for the purpose of setting nets to 

 catch the fish, and they scoop up mud in their hands 

 and dry it by the wind more than by sunshine, and 

 with earth ** as fuel warm their food and so their own 

 bodies, frozen by the north wind. Their only drink 

 is supphed by storing rain-water in tanks in the 

 forecourts of their homes. And these are the races 

 that if they are nowadays vanquished by the Roman 

 nation say that they are reduced to slavery ! That 

 is indeed the case : Fortune oft spares men as a 

 punishment.* 



II. Another marvel arising from the forests : these Forestsof 

 crowd the whole of the remainder of Germany and ^'^"*'* 

 augment the cold with their shadow, but the loftiest 

 grow not far from the Chauci mentioned above, 

 especially round two lakes.*' The actual shores of 

 these are occupied by oaks, which grow with extreme 

 eagerness, and these when undermined by the 

 waves or overthrown by blasts of wind carry away 

 with them vast islands of soil in the embrace of their 

 roots, and thus balanced, float along standing 

 upright, so that our fleets have often been terrified 

 by the wide rigging of their huge branches, when they 



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