ran in at a small desert island, where we got water—which had failed by this time—and shot two wild bulls, and then sailed away. These bulls did not have their horns on their head but under their eyes, as Momus wanted.[1] Not long afterwards we entered a sea of milk, not of water, and in it a white island, full of grapevines, came in sight. The island was a great solid cheese, as we afterwards learned by tasting it. It was twenty-five furlongs in circumference. The vines were full of grapes, but the liquid which we squeezed from them and drank was milk instead of wine. A temple had been constructed in the middle of the island in honour of Galatea the Nereid, as its inscription indicated. All the time that we stopped in the island the earth was our bread and meat and the milk from the grapes our drink. The ruler of that region was said to be Tyro, daughter of Salmoneus, who after departure from home received this guerdon from Poseidon.[2]
After stopping five days on the island we started out on the sixth, with a bit of breeze propelling us over a rippling sea. On the eighth day, by which time we were no longer sailing through the milk but in briny blue water, we came in sight of many men running over the sea, like us in every way, both in shape and in size, except only their feet, which were of cork: that is why they were called Corkfeet, if I
