340 
PLTNY's natural HISTOKY. 
[Book XYI. 
and when the waves cover the surrounding country far and 
wide, like so many mariners on board ship are they : when, 
again, the tide recedes, their condition is that of so many 
shipwrecked men, and around their cottages they pursue the 
fishes as they make their escape with the receding tide. It is 
not their lot, like the adjoining nations, to keep any flocks for 
sustenance by their milk, nor even to maintain a warfare with 
wild beasts, every shrub, even, being banished afar. With the 
sedge* and the rushes of the marsh they make cords, and 
with these they weave the nets employed in the capture of the 
fish ; they fashion the mud,^ too, with their hands, and drying 
it by the help of the winds more than of the sun, cook their 
food by its aid, and so warm their entrails, frozen as they 
are by the northern blasts; their only^ drink, too, is rain- 
water, which they collect in holes dug at the entrance of their 
abodes : and yet these nations, if this very day they were van- 
quished by the Eoman people, would exclaim against being 
reduced"^ to slavery ! Be it so, then — Fortune is most kind to 
many, just when she means to punish them.^ 
CUAP. 2. WONDEES CONNECTED WITH TEEES IN THE NOETHEEN 
EEGIONS. 
Another marvel, too, connected with the forests ! They 
cover all the rest of Germany, and by their shade augment the 
cold. Eut the highest of them all are those not far distant 
from the Chauci already mentioned, and more particularly in 
the vicinity of the two lakes^ there. The very shores are lined 
with oaks,^^ which manifest an extraordinary eagerness to 
^ " Ulva." This appears to be a general name for all kinds of aquatic 
fresh-water plants; as "alga" is that of the various sea-weeds. 
* He alludes to turf for firing ; the Humus turfa of the naturalists. 
^ Of course this applies only to those who dwelt near the sea-shore, and 
not those more inland. 
Guichardin remarks, that Pliny does not here bear in mind the sweets 
of liberty. 
^ So Laberius says, " Fortuna multis parcere in poenam solet;" "For- 
tune is the saving of many, when she means to punish them." 
^ He alludes to the vicinity of the Zuyder Zee. See B. iv. c. 29. The, 
spots where these forests once stood are now cultivated plains, covered with 
villages and other works of the industry of man. 
^'■^ " Quercus." We shall see, in the course of this Book, that its identity 
has not been satisfactorily established. 
