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A TRUE STORY, II

ship on to the tree-tops, which were thick, and cross over, if we could, to the farther side; and that is what we did. We made her fast to a large rope, climbed the trees and pulled her up with much ado. Setting her on the branches and spreading our canvas, we sailed just as if we were at sea, carried along by the force of the wind. At that juncture a line of the poet Antimachus came into my head; he says somewhere or other:

“And unto them their forest cruise pursuing.”

We managed the wood in spite of everything and reached the water. Lowering the ship again in the same way we sailed through pure, clear water, until we came to a great crevasse made by the water dividing, like the cracks that one often sees in the earth, made by earthquakes. Though we got in the sails, the ship was slow to lose headway and so came near being engulfed. Peering over the edge, we saw a precipice of fully a thousand furlongs, most frightful and unnatural—the water stood there as if cut apart! But as we looked about us we saw on the right at no great distance a bridge thrown across, which was of water, joining the surfaces of the two seas and flowing from one to the other. Rowing up, therefore, we ran into the stream and by great effort got across, though we thought we should never do it.

Then we came to a smooth sea and an island of no great size that was easily accessible and was inhabited. It was peopled by savages, the Bullheads, who have horns in the style that the

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