20f) DISTRICT OF TROAS. 
CHAP. >our preconceived and imperfect notions of the 
J geography of a country, we are too apt, either 
to doubt the truth of the description, or to warp 
the text so as to accommodate an interpretation 
the measure of our own ignorance. This has 
given rise to almost all the scepticism concern- 
ing Homer y and has also characterized the com- 
mentaries upon other authors. When, for example, 
j^lschylus relates the instruction given to lo, for 
her march from Scythia, the river he so happily 
designates by the title of Hybristes\ owing to 
its great rapidity, and which is evidently the 
Kuban'^, has puzzled his Editors, who have 
endeavoured to prove it to have been the Don^ 
the Dniepery or even the Danube, with about as 
much reason as if they had supposed it to be 
the Rhine or the Thames. An actual survey of 
the district of Caucasus, and of the course of the 
rivers, would have removed every difficulty, 
and proved the peculiar accura'^y with which 
the Poet attended, in this instance, to the fea- 
tures of Nature. When indeed he conducts 
his heifer " down the Indus to the Cataracts of 
(1) ^schi/liis in Prometh. Vmct . 742. p. 56. ed. C. J. Llomfield, 
Cantab. 181{). " ' T f:>^i(rTns . Dubitatur num in hoc loco /Eschijlus Araxem 
,fluvmm innuat, vel htru7n, vel Taiiaim, vel Alazona, vel Boi tjsthenetn, 
quodsentit Butkrvs, vel denique fluviumcni nomeu Hylrisla, &c. &c." 
Ibid, iu Glossar. p. 144. 
(2) Tlie Hypanis of D'Auville, aud yurdamis of some authors. 
