The youth became confused; he looked around him, but could no longer recognize the track. He did not know which way to steer, nor would the horses have obeyed his hand. Wildly they careered and brought the heat of midday into far regions of the Heavens that were unused to its untempered rays. All around him monstrous threatening shades awoke and stirred in the Heavens as he vexed them with the heat. Far, far below the affrighted youth could see Earth and Ocean spread out. But as his chariot raced madly down the heights, the clouds were dispersed by his fierce rays, the high mountains began to smoke, the forests to burn; ripened harvests were devoured by fire, whole cities were turned to ashes. Pindus and Parnassus were steaming, the fountains of Mount Ida were dried up, and Ætna raged with redoubled heat. Even the towering Apennines and Caucasus lost their snows, and the huge Alps were one range of living flame. The horrified youth beheld the universe burn around him, and he could scarce endure the sultry vapors that rose about him as from a furnace. Lost in clouds of whirling smoke and ashes, the steeds careered madly to and fro, he knew not whither. It is said that in that day the Moor began to change his hue and turn black, and Libya and all the deserts of Africa were then first drained of their moisture and left in great tracts of parching sandy waste. The great rivers, the Ganges, Euphrates, and the Danube, rose up in clouds of hissing steam, and the frightened Nile ran off and hid his head in the sands, and there for centuries and centuries it has lain hid. Stern Neptune, in amazement and anger, thrice reared his head above the shrinking waves where his fishes all were dying, and thrice the fierce flames drove him back. At length Earth, wrapped in her scalding seas, uplifting her scorching brows, appealed to Jupiter. "See how fierce vapors choke my breath; see my singed hair, my withered face, the heaps of cinders that defile my fair body.... Have pity." Jupiter heard her prayer. He mounted his high ethereal throne, called all powers, even the god whose son drove the chariot, to witness that what he did he was compelled to do, and launched a thunderbolt at the head of the despairing Phaeton. Thus with fire the god of gods suppressed the raging fire. Lifeless from the chariot the boy fell like a falling star, and his charred body dropped to the earth far from his own land, far in the western world, beside the river Po. The horses broke loose from their harness, the chariot was splintered into a thousand shining fragments and scattered far over the steaming earth. And the story goes, that for the space of one whole day, from morn till eve, the world existed without a sun, lighted only by the lurid glare of the burning ruins. Beside the waters of the river the Latian nymphs came round and gazed with awe upon the dead youth. His charred body they inclosed in a marble urn and wrote on it an epitaph: