Helenus first warns his friend that he must shun that part of Italy which seems so near at hand, for on this eastern shore the Greeks have many cities; but he must sail far around, until he reach the farthest shore. Above all, let him not try to speed his course through the straits of Sicily, for here the dread monsters Scylla and Charybdis keep the way. They shall at last come to "Cumæ on the western shore, and the haunted lake, and the woods that rustle over Avernus," and there shall they learn further of their fates from the inspired prophetess of Apollo's shrine. Their final resting-place, where heaven shall permit them to found their city and end their wanderings, by this strange token they shall know--a huge white sow with thirty young, lying at ease beneath a spreading oak. "Such," says Helenus, "are the counsels which it is given you to receive from my lips. Go on your way, and by your actions lift to heaven the greatness of Troy." With exchange of gifts, tokens of mutual love, sad at parting, but with high thoughts of glorious destiny, the royal pair speed their guests on their way. One reach to the northward, a night on the sandy shore, an early embarkation in the misty dusk of the morning, and Æneas turns his prows once more to the unknown west. And now the stars were fled, and Aurora was just reddening in the sky, when in the distance we see the dim hills and low plains of Italy. "Italy!" Achates was the first to cry. Italy, our crews welcome with a shout of rapture. Then, my father Anchises wreathed a mighty bowl with a garland, and filled it with wine, and called on the gods, standing upon the tall stern: "Ye powers that rule sea and land and weather, waft us a fair wind and a smooth passage, and breathe auspiciously!" Conington. They make a hasty landing on this nearest shore, pay solemn tribute to Juno as Helenus had bidden them, and speeding across the great curving bay of Tarentum, hug fast the shores of southern Italy. Barely escaping the dangerous straits of Sicily, they pass the night upon the shore near Ætna, whose awful rumblings, whirlwinds of glowing ashes, and belched up avalanches of molten stone, appall their hearts. This night of dread ends in a morning of horror, for there, upon the mountainside, they see the Cyclopean monsters whom Ulysses and his band had so narrowly escaped. Hastily they push away from this dread coast, and sail clear around to western Sicily, where Æneas' aged father dies, and is buried in the friendly realm of King Acestes. From here one more short course would have brought them to their journey's end; but Juno's implacable hate had stirred the winds against them, and by that dark storm they had been driven far away and wrecked on the coast of Africa.