Demeter continued her search for her daughter, until at last she returned to Sicily, whence she had at first set out, and stood by the banks of the river Cyane. The river nymph would have told the goddess all she had witnessed, but dared not for fear of Pluto; so she ventured merely to take up the girdle which Persephone had dropped in her flight, and float it to the feet of her mother. Demeter, seeing this, laid her curse upon the innocent earth in which her daughter had disappeared. Then succeeded drought and famine, flood and plague, until at last the fountain Arethusa made intercession for the land. For she had observed that it had opened all unwillingly to the might of Pluto, and she had also, in her flight from Alpheus through the lower regions of the earth, beheld the missing Persephone. She reported that the daughter of Demeter seemed sad, but no longer showed alarm in her countenance. Her look was such as became a queen—the queen of Erebus, the powerful bride of the monarch of the realm of the dead. When Demeter heard this she stood a while like one stupefied; then she implored Zeus to interfere to procure the restitution of her daughter. Zeus consented on condition that Persephone should not, during her stay in the lower world, have taken any food; otherwise, the Fates forbade her release. Accordingly, Hermes was sent, accompanied by Spring, to demand Persephone of Pluto. The wily monarch consented; but, alas! the maiden had taken a pomegranate which Pluto offered her, and had sucked the sweet pulp from a few of the seeds. A compromise, however, was effected by which she was to pass half the time with her mother and the rest with the lord of Hades—so the flowers bloom upon the earth for half the year, and for the other half are buried underground, out of sight. Demeter, pacified with this arrangement, restored the earth to her favor. She remembered, also, about Celeus and his family, and her promise to his infant son, Triptolemus. She taught the boy the use of the plough and how to sow the seed. She took him in her chariot, drawn by winged dragons, through all the countries of the earth; and under her guidance he imparted to mankind valuable grains, and the knowledge of agriculture. After his return, Triptolemus built a temple to Demeter in Eleusis, and established the worship of the goddess under the name of the Eleusinian mysteries, which, in the splendor and solemnity of their observance, surpassed all other religious celebrations among the Greeks. * * * * *