IX. The learned Abbé Fourmont, who in the years 1729 and 30, by order of the most Christian king, made a voyage of critical enquiry to the Levant, where he scrutinized with the greatest exactness all Greece, and after passing the brook which supplied it with water, examined with much attention the Stygian Lake; which he gives the following horrible description of. He says, the water of the brook which runs into it, before it enters the lake, is clear, but after that, becomes thick and tainted; an alteration, which can only be imputed to the bad qualities and pernicious nature of its bottom. He says further, the surface presents to the view, a confused mixture of the most disgustful tints; and that a thick scum, of the colour of the rust of copper tinged with black, swims on its top, which being agitated by the wind, looks like the bubbles of boiling tar or bitumen. The obnoxious active quality of its waters, is not less pernicious than its aspect is displeasing; and the vapours which arise from them, blight all the plants that grow near the lake; and that it’s banks are avoided and fled from, by all sorts of beasts. The Abbé Fourmont mentions a circumstance, that contradicts what has been related by Theophrastus, which is, that its fish poison whoever eats them; for he asserts, that no fish can live in the waters of the lake; and saying they are deadly to the very fish, is certainly an aggravation of their pernicious qualities. X. The lake then, being in so many respects horrible and affrighting, it is no wonder that from these circumstances, poetic fancy should place it in the region of horror, or at the entrance of it. XI. The fable of the boatman Charon, who for an obolo, an Athenian piece of money worth a little more than our halfpenny, carried the souls of the dead over the lake, was derived from an Egyptian story, related by Diodorus Siculus. There was in Egypt a lake, over which dead bodies after they were embalmed, were carried to the opposite shore to be buried; and there were judges appointed to attend at the place of embarkation, to examine into the course of life which had been led by the dead persons; and after this inquiry, to pronounce whether they were or were not, worthy to be interred; which office was exercised with such severity, that this common honour has been denied to some of the royal family. To this story there is annexed a tradition, which the Abbé Fourmont says, subsists in that part of Egypt at this day. The tradition is as follows; that there was once a farmer of the revenues of one of the Pharaohs, who laid a tax upon this transportation of the dead, which brought in vast sums. Thus you see, that both in Greece and Egypt, there were found true materials, wherewith to fabricate the fable of the Stygian Lake, to build the boat which conveyed the dead bodies to the abyss, and to erect a monument, to eternize the avarice of the boatman Charon.