MELPOMENE. 157
species which have horns, but a particular kind which
never drink. They have also oryxes of the size of an
ox, whose horns are'used by the Phoenicians to make
the sides of their citharte. In this region likewise
there are bassaria, hyenas, porcupines, wild boars,
dictyes, thoes, panthers, boryes, land crocodiles three
cubits long, resembling lizards, ostriches, and small
serpents, having each a single horn. Besides these
animals, they have such as are elsewhere found, ex
cept the stag and the boar, which are never seen in
Africa. They Tiave also three distinct species of mice,
some of which are called dipodes, others are called
zegeries, which in the African tongue has the same
meaning with the Greek word for hills. The other
species is called the echines. There is moreover to
be seen a kind of weasel in Silphium, very much like
that of Tartessus. The above are all the animals
amongst the Libyan Nomades, which my most dili
gent researches have enabled me to discover.
CXCIII. Next to the Maxyes are the Zaueces,
whose women guide the chariots of war.
CXCIV. The people next in order are the Zygan-
tes, amongst whom a great abundance of honey is
found, the produce of their bees; but of this they say
a great deal more is made by the natives. They all
stain their bodies with vermilion, and feed upon mon
keys, with which animal their mountains abound.
CXCV. According to the Carthaginians, we next
meet with an island called Cyranis, two hundred
stadia in length. It is of a trifling breadth, but the
communication with the continent is easy, and it
abounds with olives and vines. Here is a lake, from
which the young women of the island draw up
gold-dust with bunches of feathers besmeared with
pitch. For the truth of this I will not answer, relat
ing merely what I have been told. To me it seoms
the more probable, after having seen at Zacynthus
pitch drawn from the bottom of the water. At this
place are a number of lakes, the largest of which is
seventy feet in circumference, and of the depth of two
orgyite. Into this water they let down a pole, at the
end of which is a bunch of myrtle; the pitch attaches
Vol. II. O