So, with his father and his infant son, and carrying with him the national gods and sacred fire of Troy, Æneas and the remnant of the Trojans had set forth upon their voyage for the unknown shores of Hesperia--the “Land of the West.” Their first resting-place was on the friendly coast of Thrace, where Æneas laid the foundations of a city which was to bear his name. A strange adventure befell him there. While he was pulling some cornel-twigs which grew out of a mound, he found, to his horror, that the ends dropped blood. A third time, after prayer to avert the omen, he plucked a sapling, when a hollow voice from below warned him to desist from such cruelty. It is the grave of the unhappy Polydorus, a young son of Priam, whom his father, when Troy became hard pressed, had sent away with some of his treasures to the safe keeping of the king of Thrace, who for the sake of these treasures had basely murdered him. The cornel-wood spears with which he had been transfixed had taken root, and the blood had flowed from his body.[21] They did but wait to pay due honours to the shade of Polydorus, and then hastened from the accursed coast. Landing next on the sacred isle of Delos, they consulted the oracle there as to their future home. Apollo was as enigmatical as his wont--he bade them “seek out their ancient mother.” They understood this to be spoken of the ancient cradle of their race; Anchises thought the phrase pointed to Crete, the birthplace of their ancestral hero Teucrus, and where stood the ancient Mount Ida, from which the mountain in the Troad derived its name. And Idomeneus, the king of Crete, who had joined the war against Troy, had been driven from his kingdom, and left a vacant throne.[22] To Crete they sailed, and there began to build a city, to be called Pergamia, after the citadel of Troy. But a year of deadly pestilence fell on man and beast; and in a dream Æneas saw the angry gods of Troy standing by him “in the full moonlight that streamed through the windows,” and warning him that the promised land, the ancient home of their race, is not in Crete, but Hesperia--the “Land of the West”--whence came their forefather Dardanus. Then Anchises too remembered that such had been the frequent warning of Cassandra--the prophetess to whom none would listen. They re-embarked accordingly. After a storm of three days and three nights, when no pilot could keep the course, they were cast upon the islands of the Harpies[23]--the monster sisters, half women and half birds, foul and loathsome, who are hateful to gods and men. With them they had to do battle for the meal which they had spread; and one of those hags, in her wrath, prophesied that before they reached their promised Hesperia they should be forced “to eat their tables.” The description of the ensuing voyage, in Mr Conington’s tasteful translation, reads like a passage from the ‘Lord of the Isles,’ yet presents a fair equivalent, especially in the last fine touch, to the Latin original:--