er named
Cydnus, in which gouty people soak their legs and find relief from pain.

7. There are also many other kinds of water which have peculiar
properties; for example, the river Himera in Sicily, which, after
leaving its source, is divided into two branches. One flows in the
direction of Etruria and has an exceedingly sweet taste on account of a
sweet juice in the soil through which it runs; the other runs through a
country where there are salt pits, and so it has a salt taste. At
Paraetonium, and on the road to Ammon, and at Casius in Egypt there are
marshy lakes which are so salt that they have a crust of salt on the
surface. In many other places there are springs and rivers and lakes
which are necessarily rendered salt because they run through salt pits.

8. Others flow through such greasy veins of soil that they are
overspread with oil when they burst out as springs: for example, at
Soli, a town in Cilicia, the river named Liparis, in which swimmers or
bathers get anointed merely by the water. Likewise there is a lake in
Ethiopia which anoints people who swim in it, and one in India which
emits a great quantity of oil when the sky is clear. At Carthage is a
spring that has oil swimming on its surface and smelling like sawdust
from citrus wood, with which oil sheep are anointed. In Zacynthus and
about Dyrrachium and Apollonia are springs which discharge a great
quantity of pitch with their water. In Babylon, a lake of very great
extent, called Lake Asphaltitis, has liquid asphalt swimming on its
surface, with which asphalt and with burnt brick Semiramis built the
wall surrounding Babylon. At Jaffa in Syria and among the Nomads in
Arabia, are lakes of enormous size that yield very large masses of
asphalt, which are carried off by the inhabitants thereabouts.

9. There is nothing marvellous in this, for quarries of hard asphalt are
numerous there. So, when a quantity of water bursts its way through the
asphaltic soil, it carries asphalt out with it, and after passing out of
the ground, the water is separated and so rejects the asphalt from
itself. Again, in Cappadocia on the road from Mazaca to Tyana, there is
an extensive lake into which if a part of a reed or of some other thing
be plunged, and withdrawn the next day, it will be found that the part
thus withdrawn has turned into stone, while the part which remained
above water retains its original nature.

10. In the same way, at Hierapolis in Phrygia there is