The river in question has medicinal properties, its mud being of 3 the kind that glues together and hardens the bodies it encounters. Just as the dust at Puteoli becomes stone if it touches water, so, contrariwise, if the water of this river touches a solid body, it adheres and gets firmly affixed to it. This is the reason why objects thrown into the same lake[57] are constantly found to be turned to stone when they are taken out. This occurs at several places in Italy; you may put into the water a twig or bough and a few days after you can take out a stone. The mud surrounds the object and gradually 4 coats it over. This will seem the less surprising if you have remarked that the Albula, and, generally speaking, all water charged with sulphur, deposit a coating of it on the banks of their channels and streams. Some one or other of the foregoing causes accounts for the peculiarities of those lakes, whereof who tastes with the lips, in the words of the same poet, [57] The allusion is not quite evident. Goes raving mad or endures a sleep of wondrous depth. The effect is like that of strong drink, only more violent. Drunken- 5 ness is madness until its effects pass off; with a weight like lead it bears down its victim into sleep. In the like manner the strong infusion of sulphur in this water contains a sort of poison that is more potent owing to the noxious atmosphere, and either goads the mind to madness or weighs it down in deep sleep. The river in Lyncestis likewise possesses this baleful power: For whoso with intemperate lips has drained a draught, Staggers as if having drunk deep of wine undiluted. XXI There are certain caves a glance down into which has cost people their life. So swift is their destructive power that it kills in flight the birds that cross them. That is the kind of air and the kind of place from which waters of death escape. If the infection of the air and place is less severe, the damage is less fatal too, merely affecting the sinews like men overpowered by intoxication. I am not at all surprised that place and air infect water and render it similar in character to the tract through which and from which it proceeds. Similarly, milk shows the taste of the cow’s fodder, the quality of the wine comes out even in the vinegar it yields. There is, in fact, nothing that does not bear marks of its origin in the same way. XXII