of his rider, or as if she knew that in her capacious womb's rich
freightage she bore Ulysses.

He whose life past had been a series of disquiets, in seas among rude
waves, in battles amongst ruder foes, now slept securely, forgetting all;
his eye-lids bound in such deep sleep as only yielded to death; and when
they reached the nearest Ithacan port by the next morning, he was still
asleep. The mariners, not willing to awake him, landed him softly, and
laid him in a cave at the foot of an olive-tree, which made a shady recess
in that narrow harbour, the haunt of almost none but the sea-nymphs, which
are called Naiads; few ships before this Phaeacian vessel having put into
that haven, by reason of the difficulty and narrowness of the entrance.
Here leaving him asleep, and disposing in safe places near him the
presents with which king Alcinous had dismissed him, they departed for
Phaeacia; where these wretched mariners never again set foot; but just as
they arrived, and thought to salute their country earth, in sight of their
city's turrets, and in open view of their friends who from the harbour
with shouts greeted their return, their vessel and all the mariners which
were in her were turned to stone, and stood transformed and fixed in sight
of the whole Phaeacian city, where it yet stands, by Neptune's vindictive
wrath; who resented thus highly the contempt which those Phaeacians had
shown in convoying home a man whom the god had destined to destruction.
Whence it comes to pass that the Phaeacians at this day will at no price
be induced to lend their ships to strangers, or to become the carriers for
other nations, so highly do they still dread the displeasure of their sea-
god, while they see that terrible monument ever in sight.

When Ulysses awoke, which was not till some time after the mariners had
departed, he did not at first know his country again, either that long
absence had made it strange, or that Minerva (which was more likely) had