Leaving Taphræ, and going along the mainland, we find in the interior the Auchetæ[2858], in whose country the Hypanis has its rise, as also the Neurœ, in whose district the Borysthenes has its source, the Geloni[2859], the Thyssagetæ, the Budini, the Basilidæ, and the Agathyrsi[2860] with their azure-coloured hair. Above them are the Nomades, and then a nation of Anthropophagi or cannibals. On leaving Lake Buges, above the Lake Mæotis we come to the Sauromatæ and the Essedones[2861]. Along the coast, as far as the river Tanais[2862], are the Mæotæ, from whom the lake derives its name, and the last of all, in the rear of them, the Arimaspi. We then come to the Riphæan[2863] mountains, and the region known by the name of Pterophoros[2864], because of the perpetual fall of snow there, the flakes of which resemble feathers; a part of the world which has been condemned by the decree of nature to lie immersed in thick darkness; suited for nothing but the generation of cold, and to be the asylum of the chilling blasts of the northern winds. Behind these mountains, and beyond the region of the northern winds, there dwells, if we choose to believe it, a happy race, known as the Hyperborei[2865], a race that lives to an extreme old age, and which has been the subject of many marvellous stories[2866]. At this spot are supposed to be the hinges upon which the world revolves, and the extreme limits of the revolutions of the stars. Here we find light for six months together, given by the sun in one continuous day, who does not, however, as some ignorant persons have asserted, conceal himself from the vernal equinox[2867] to autumn. On the contrary, to these people there is but one rising of the sun for the year, and that at the summer solstice, and but one setting, at the winter solstice. This region, warmed by the rays of the sun, is of a most delightful temperature, and exempt from every noxious blast. The abodes of the natives are the woods and groves; the gods receive their worship singly and in groups, while all discord and every kind of sickness are things utterly unknown. Death comes upon them only when satiated with life; after a career of feasting, in an old age sated with every luxury, they leap from a certain rock there into the sea; and this they deem the most desirable mode of ending existence. Some writers have placed these people, not in Europe, but at the very verge of the shores of Asia, because we find there a people called the Attacori[2868], who greatly resemble them and occupy a very similar locality. Other writers again have placed them midway between the two suns, at the spot where it sets to the Antipodes and rises to us; a thing however that cannot possibly be, in consequence of the vast tract of sea which there intervenes. Those writers who place them nowhere[2869] but under a day which lasts for six months, state that in the morning they sow, at mid-day they reap, at sunset they gather in the fruits of the trees, and during the