Page:The Natural History of Pliny.djvu/370

 336 flint's NATTJEAL HISTOET. [Book lY. the MseotEe, from wliom the lake derives its name, and the last of all, in the rear of them, the Arimaspi. "We then come to the Eiphsean^ moimtams, and the region known by the name of Pterophoros^, 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 moiuitains, and beyond the region of the northern winds, there dwells, if we choose to believe it, a happy race, known as the Hyperborei^, a race that lives to an extreme old age, and which has been the subject of many mar- vellous stories^. 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^ 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 wdnter solstice. This region, warmed by the rays of the sun, is of a most delightful temperature, and exempt from ^ Most probably these mountains were a western brancli of the Ura- lian chain. 2 From the Greek Trrepo^opos, " wiug-beai'ing " or "feather-bearing." 3 This legendary race was said to dwell in the regions beyond Boreas, or the northern wind, which issued from the Eiphsean mountains, the name of which was derived from pnrai or " hrn'rictines " issuing from a cavern, and which these heights warded off from the Hyperboreans and sent to more southern nations. Hence they never felt the northern blasts, and enjoyed a hfe of supreme happiness and undistvirbed repose. " Here," says Hu.mboldt, " are the first views of a natural science which explains the distribution of heat and the difference of chmates by local causes — by the direction of the winds — the proximity of the sun, and the action of a moist or sahne principle." — Asie Cent rale, vol. i. ^ Pindar says, in the " Pytliia," x. 56, " The Muse is no stranger to their manners. The dances of ghls and the sweet melody of the lyre and pipe resound on every side, and wreathing their locks with the glistening bay, they feast joyously. For this sacred race there is no doom of sickness or of disease ; but they hve apart from toil and battles, undis- tm'bed by the exacting Nemesis." ^ Ilardouin remarks that Pomponius Mela, who asserts that the sun rises here at the vernal and sets at the autumnal equinox, is right ia