The geography of Thessaly is remarkable. According to a tradition already mentioned it was once a mountain-girt lake, the waters of which augmented by unusual rains burst their stupendous barriers and tore themselves a way through opposing rocks to the sea. Among the tribes of northern Hindùstân a similar tradition prevails respecting the formation of the Vale of Kashmèr; and whether in these cases the voice of fame has preserved or not an historical truth, such events may be regarded as not improbable in countries abounding with mountain lakes whose beds lie considerably above the level of the sea. The lofty ridge which skirts the shores of the Ægæan, and is said to have been rent in remote antiquity by the waters of the lake, presents a highly varied aspect to the approaching mariner. First on sailing northward Pelion comes in sight: a broad ridge rising from the waves like a huge uncrenalated wall, and covered in Homeric times with fiercely waving woods. To this succeeds Ossa, with its steep conical peak, clothed with durable snows and divided by a narrow dusky gap from Olympos. This gap is Tempe,[175] whose savage beauties poets and sophists have vied with each other in describing, though the reality is still finer than their pictures. On entering the defiles of the mountains a narrow glen hemmed in by precipitous rocks, bare in some places, in others verdant with hanging oaks, receives the waters of the Peneios, which, like the Rhone at St. Maurice and the Nile at Silsilis, in some places fill up the whole breadth of the pass, leaving scarcely room for a straitened road carried over rocky ledges. Farther on they diffuse themselves over a broad pebbly bed, and narrow prospects are opened up through woody vistas into soft pastural recesses, carpeted with emerald turf, and perfumed with flowers and shrubs of the richest fragrance. Anon the vale contracts again, gloomy cliffs frown over the stream and sadden its surface with their shadows, until at length the whole chain is traversed and the Peneios precipitates its laughing waters into the Ægæan.[176] Crossing the great range of Pindos we enter Epeiros,[177] a country anciently divided into many provinces, and partly inhabited by semi-barbarous tribes, where on the borders of a lake singularly beautiful and picturesque stood the fane and oracle of Dodonæan Zeus. Homer, accustomed to the mild skies of Ionia, speaks of its climate as rude and severe. But Byron, born among the hungry rocks of Caledonia, and habituated to the savage features of the north, was smitten with its wild charms, and thus describes one of the scenes in the neighbourhood near the sources of the Acheron.