Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 1).djvu/128

 storm caught at sea were driven ashore; some near the place called Ipni, "the Ovens," at the foot of Pelion, others on the beach; some were dashed on Cape Sepias itself; some were wrecked near the cities of Melibœa and of Casthanæa. The storm was indeed irresistible."

Hauling the ships on shore seems to have been customary in those days; for, in another place, (when referring to the ship-canal Xerxes had ordered to be cut to the north of the headland of Athos,) Herodotus remarks that "it was possible, without any great labour, to have drawn his ships over the isthmus."

It is not easy to account for the discrepancy in the statements about the number of men each of the vessels carried, or to comprehend the facility with which they were drawn up on a beach in the face of an approaching storm, or how they could, as Herodotus suggests, have been transported across the isthmus. Possibly Herodotus was misinformed as to the number of men in each of the vessels. Curiously enough, the descriptions preserved of the fleets and