CHAP. XIII.] 
HEEODOTUS. 
149 
gate the earth and have turned, declare that their undertaking 
did not fail in consequence of their having met with land, but 
in consequence of want of provisions and of complete timidity 
.... At sea they could always have gone further. . . . This 
view (that the earth is surrounded by water) also accords better 
with the phenomena of the tides, for as the ebb and flow are 
everywhere the same, or at least do not vary much, the cause of 
this motion is to be sought for in a single ocean.’’ i 
But if men were thus agreed that the north coast of Asia and 
Europe was bounded by the sea, there was for sixteen hundred 
years after the birth of Christ no actual knowledge of the nature 
of the Asiatic portion of this line of coast. Obscure statements 
regarding it, however, were current at an early period. 
While Herodotus, in the forty-fifth chapter of his Fourth 
Book, expressly says that no man, so far as was then known, had 
discovered whether the eastern and northern countries of Europe 
are surrounded by the sea, he gives in the twenty-third and 
twenty-fourth chapters of the same book the following account 
of the countries lying to the north-east:— 
“As far as the territory of the Scythians all the land which 
we have described is an uninterrupted plain, with cultivable 
soil, but beyond that the ground is stony and rugged. And on 
the other side of this extensive stone-bound tract there live at 
the foot of a high mountain-chain men who are bald from their 
birth, both men and women; they are also flat-nosed and have 
large chins. They speak a peculiar language, wear the Scythian 
dress and live on the fruit of a tree. The tree on which they 
live is called Fonticon, is about as large as the wild fig-tree, 
and bears fruit which resembles a bean, but has a kernel. 
When this fruit is ripe, they strain it through a cloth, and the 
juice which flows from it is thick and black and called aschy. 
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 
^ I quote this because the movement of the tides is still, in our own time, 
made use of to determine whether certain parts of the Polar seas are con¬ 
nected with each other or not. 
