As the army advanced, they came to other places of interest and objects of curiosity and wonder. There was a district where the people made a sort of artificial honey from grain, and a lake from which the inhabitants procured salt by evaporation, and mines, too, of silver and of gold. These objects interested and amused the minds of the Persians as they moved along, without, however, at all retarding or interrupting their progress. In due time they reached the great city of Sardis in safety, and here Xerxes established his head-quarters, and awaited the coming of spring. In the mean time, however, he sent heralds into Greece to summon the country to surrender to him. This is a common formality when an army is about to attack either a town, a castle, or a kingdom. Xerxes's heralds crossed the AEgean Sea, and made their demands, in Xerxes's name, upon the Greek authorities. As might have been expected, the embassage was fruitless; and the heralds returned, bringing with them, from the Greeks, not acts or proffers of submission, but stern expressions of hostility and defiance. Nothing, of course, now remained, but that both parties should prepare for the impending crisis. CHAPTER V. CROSSING THE HELLESPONT. B.C. 480 Winter in Asia Minor.--Destruction of the bridge.--Indignation of Xerxes.--His ridiculous punishment of the sea.--Xerxes orders a new bridge to be made.--Its construction.--Mode of securing the boats.--The bridge finished.--Eclipse of the sun.--March from Sardis.--Order of march.--Car of Jupiter.--Chariot of Xerxes.--Camp followers.--Arrival at the plain of Troy.--The grand sacrifice.--Dejection of the army.--Mode of enlistment.--Condition of the soldiers.--Privations and hardships.--Storm on Mount Ida.--Abydos.--Parade of the troops.--Xerxes weeps.--The reason of it.--Comments of writers.--Remarks of Artabanus.--Conversation with Artabanus.--He renews his warnings.--Anxiety of Artabanus.--Xerxes is not convinced.--Advice of Artabanus in respect to employing the Ionians.--Xerxes's opinion of the Ionians.--Artabanus is permitted to return.--Sham sea fight.--Xerxes's address.--Crossing the bridge.--Preliminary ceremonies.--The order of march.--Movement of the fleet.--Time occupied in the passage.--Scene of confusion. Although the ancient Asia Minor was in the same latitude as New York, there was yet very little winter there. Snows fell, indeed, upon the summits of the mountains, and ice formed occasionally upon quiet streams, and yet, in general, the imaginations of the inhabitants, in forming mental images of frost and snow, sought them not in their own winters, but in the cold and icy regions of the north, of which, however, scarcely any thing was known to them except what was disclosed by wild and exaggerated rumors and legends. [Illustration: MAP OF GREECE.]