care of the vessel, I remained on shore with the other twenty, in
order to take a view of the interior part of the island.

About three stadia from the sea, as we passed through a wood, we
found a pillar of brass, with a Greek inscription on it, the
characters almost effaced; we could make out however these words,
"thus far came Hercules and Bacchus:" near it were the marks of two
footsteps on a rock, one of them measured about an acre, the other
something less; the smaller one appeared to me to be that of
Bacchus, the larger that of Hercules; we paid our adorations to the
deities and proceeded. We had not got far before we met with a
river, which seemed exactly to resemble wine, particularly that of
Chios; {79} it was of a vast extent, and in many places navigable;
this circumstance induced us to give more credit to the inscription
on the pillar, when we perceived such visible marks of Bacchus's
presence here. As I had a mind to know whence this river sprung, I
went back to the place from which it seemed to arise, but could not
trace the spring; I found, however, several large vines full of
grapes, at the root of every one the wine flowed in great abundance,
and from them I suppose the river was collected. We saw a great
quantity of fish in it which were extremely like wine, both in taste
and colour, and after we had taken and eaten a good many of them we
found ourselves intoxicated; and when we cut them up, observed that
they were full of grape stones; it occurred to us afterwards that we
should have mixed them with some water fish, as by themselves they
tasted rather too strong of the wine.

We passed the river in a part of it which was fordable, and a little
farther on met with a most wonderful species of vine, the bottoms of
them that touched the earth were green and thick, and all the upper