150 
THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. 
[chap. 
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'informationthe 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 s'poii the eye. The 
whole of the country which I have been speaking of has so hard 
and severe a winter, that there prevails there for eight months 
an altogether insupportable cold, so that if you pour water on 
the ground you will not make mud, but if you light a fire you 
will make mud. Even the sea freezes, and the whole Cimmerian 
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 opinion. 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 parts 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, nowithstanding the 
absurdities mixed up with them, are founded in the first 
instance on the accounts of eye-witnesses, which have passed 
