So we skirted the many islands west of Yatnan and the mainland reaching down among them, and laid our course more straightly northward, soon to find ourselves in a long and narrow sea branching far upward from our own beside a long peninsula shaped like a boot. A great distance up this sea’s eastern shore we sailed, passing mostly rocky coasts, and rounding its far extremity and returning upon the western shore, where we found life indeed, but life of an almost savage sort. There came to the beach to meet us when we made a landing a band of scores of people, men and women, clad in skins and most abundantly tattooed in strange designs. Yet were not these people altogether savage and they were peacefully inclined. They had little for which we cared to barter even trinkets, and so we left them. Then came another sort of sailing and it was well for us that we were most skilful seamen now, for surely the voyage had its perils. Westward, rounding the tip of the great boot of the peninsula, we turned, and entered a passage between it and a big island upon which a huge volcano was vomiting its fire and smoke. Here all our skill and courage found their test, for more desperate and dangerous passage could not be than that between the island and the mainland: fierce, treacherous currents threatening to cast us upon terrifying rocks on one side or the other. Very content were we when we came into the open sea again and laid our course upward along the western shore of this great boot. It proved a pleasant land enough, though we passed another huge volcano in eruption and rearing its sombre plume high in the heavens; and on making landing we found a people made up chiefly of villages of harmless fishermen whom we liked well, but who had as little to barter as those upon the other shore. So we voyaged still farther northward, and entered a river, up which we sailed but a league or two, seeking the reason for a smoke which arose there and which, we thought, might betoken some home of man. We were not mistaken. There were men and women there, lusty and vigorous, of two tribes in alliance and occupying a straggling double village scattered over seven close-grouped hills, through which the river ran. Here we lingered for several days, learning much of the people of this village--Roma, as they called it,--and of the ways of those who lived in it. They were a rugged people, most full of enterprise, and chiefly engaged, it seemed, in raiding the tribes about them. With us they became upon good terms and we made trade for such tremendous store of wolfskins as must make our voyage profitable. Little we could divine that in centuries to come Phœnicians should find here one of their greatest markets, and that Sidonian broidery should bedeck the robes of Roma’s fair women and Tyrian purple band the togas of senators and nobles and of emperors. We sailed away well satisfied. Not much farther did we make this