y safely, and seemed pleased with their
burden, neighing like horses. When they came up, they stood at a
little distance, and threw dried cuttle-fish and crabs'-eyes at us;
but we, in return, attacking them with our darts and arrows, many of
them were wounded; and, unable to stand it any longer, they
retreated to the island.

In the middle of the night, the sea being quite calm, we
unfortunately struck upon a halcyon's nest, of an immense size,
being about sixty stadia in circumference; the halcyon was sitting
upon it, and was herself not much less; as she flew off, she was
very near oversetting our ship with the wind of her wings, and, as
she went, made a most hideous groaning. As soon as it was day we
took a view of the nest, which was like a great ship, and built of
trees; in it were five hundred eggs, each of them longer than a
hogshead of Chios. We could hear the young ones croaking within;
so, with a hatchet we broke one of the eggs, and took the chicken
out unfledged; it was bigger than twenty vultures put together.

When we were got about two hundred stadia from the nest, we met with
some surprising prodigies. A cheniscus came, and sitting on the
prow of our ship, clapped his wings and made a noise. Our pilot
Scintharus had been bald for many years, when on a sudden his hair
came again. But what was still more wonderful, the mast of our ship
sprouted out, sent forth several branches, and bore fruit at the top
of it, large figs, and grapes not quite ripe. We were greatly
astonished, as you may suppose, and prayed most devoutly to the gods
to avert the evil which was portended.

We had not gone above five hundred stadia farther before we saw an
immensely large and thick wood of pines and cypresses; we took it
for a tract of land, but it was all a deep sea, planted with trees
that had no root, which stood, however, unmoved, upright, and, as it
were, swimming in it. Approaching near to it, we began to consider
what we could do best. There was no sailing between the trees,
which were close together, nor did we know how to get back. I got
upon one of the highest of them, to see how far they reached, and
perceived that they continued for about fifty stadia or more, and
beyond that it was all sea again; we resolved therefore to drag the
ship up to the top boughs, which were very thick, and so convey it
along, which, by fixing a great rope to it, with no little toil and
difficulty, we performed; got it up,