Anchises now proposed that they should return to Delos, and again seek
the counsel and aid of Apollo, but that night AEneas had a dream in
which the household gods whose images he had carried with him from
Troy, appeared to him, and told him that Crete was not the land
destined by the gods for him and his people. They also told him where
that Hesperia was, of which he had heard from the shade of Creusa.

"A land there is, Hesperia called of old,
(The soil is fruitful, and the natives bold--
The OE-no'tri-ans held it once,) by later fame
Now called I-ta'li-a, from the leader's name.
I-a'si-us there, and Dardanus, were born:
From thence we came, and thither must return.
Rise, and thy sire with these glad tidings greet:
Search Italy: for Jove denies thee Crete."
DRYDEN, _AEneid_, BOOK III.

AEneas made haste to tell this dream to his father, whereupon the old
man advised that they should at once depart. So they quickly got their
ships in order and set sail for Hesperia--the Land of the West. But
scarcely had they lost sight of the shore when a terrible storm arose
which drove them out of their course, and for three days and nights
the light of heaven was shut from their view. Even the great
Pal-i-nu'rus, the pilot of the ship of AEneas, "could not distinguish
night from day, or remember his true course in the midst of the wave."

On the fourth day, however, the storm ceased and soon the Trojans
sighted land in the distance. It was one of the islands of the Ionian
sea, called the Stroph'a-des. Here dwelt the Har'pies, monsters having
faces like women, and bodies, wings, and claws like vultures. When the