general physical bankruptcy. Its name in ancient Caria
denotes its seaside-resort location, Hali-Karnas-Sos meaning literally
"Karnassus-by-the-sea," like Boulogne-sur-mer. The city was under the
protection of Hermes and Aphrodite, whose temples were near each other.
Human nature in the days of Halicarnassus did not much differ from human
nature at Monte Carlo or Baden-Baden. The baths had a number of young
and handsome eunuchs who waited on the old, debauched, and nervous
wrecks, and the nymph who presided over the whole was Talmakis, a name
derived from the salty nature of the springs which fed the baths; this
nymph was worshiped as Aphrodite. Pederasty was one of the practices at
these baths. From these conjoined conditions the place was said to be
peopled with hermaphrodites,--meaning, at first, simply that they were
under the protection of Hermes and Aphrodite; and latterly the name was
attached to the passive agent in the pederastic art,--a name that has
followed the class and crossed the ocean into the interior wilds of
America, as in Powell's history of the manners and customs of the
Omahas, an Indian tribe of the Missouri, we find that they at times
practiced pederasty, the passive agent being called by the Indians an
hermaphrodite, or double sexed.[38]

The relations that from eunuchism led to pederasty are very easy of
explanation. Eunuchism induces an effeminate form, softer body, and
prevents the growth of the beard; the voice is softer and more
melodious; and their timidity renders them also more effeminate,
obedient, and dependent. The peculiar commingling of the female form
with that of the male furnished to the sculptors the models for those
wonderfully well-made forms which are yet to be seen, representing in
statuary the forms of Androgynes and Hermaphrodites; that of the
favorite eunuch of the emperor Adrian being remarkable for the symmetry
of its form and grace of pose.

Europe must have been astonished at the tales that were carried back by
the early explorers and voyagers, in relation to the New World. The
story of the immensity of the quantity of gold and silver, of great
stores of hidden treasures, of the quantities of precious gems and
priceless crystals was fully discounted when, from the Florida coast and
the explorers of the Lower Mississippi, men returned with the tale that
in the everglades and in the trackless forests, intersected by navigable
sloughs, there dwelt a people half of whom