39. Then, a long way off, is the bay Carcinites, and a river of the same name, and a grove of Diana, frequented by many votaries in those countries.
40. After that we come to the Dnieper (Borysthenes), which rises in the mountains of the Neuri; a river very large at its first beginning, and which increases by the influx of many other streams, till it falls into the sea with great violence; on its woody banks is the town of Borysthenes, and Cephalonesus, and some altars consecrated to Alexander the Great and Augustus Cæsar.
41. Next, at a great distance, is an island inhabited by the Sindi, a tribe of low-born persons, who upon the overthrow of their lords and masters in Asia, took possession of their wives and properties. Below them is a narrow strip of coast called by the natives the Course of Achilles, having been made memorable in olden time by the exercises of the Thessalian chief, and next to that is the city of Tyros, a colony of the Phœnicians, watered by the river Dniester.
42. But in the middle of the arc which we have described as being of an extended roundness, and which takes an active traveller fifteen days to traverse, are the Europæan Alani, the Costoboci, and the countless tribes of the Scythians, who extend over territories which have no ascertained limit; a small part of whom live on grain. But the rest wander over vast deserts, knowing neither ploughtime nor seedtime; but living in cold and frost, and feeding like great beasts. They place their relations, their homes, and their wretched furniture on waggons covered with bark, and, whenever they choose, they migrate without hindrance, driving off these waggons wherever they like.
43. When one arrives at another point of the circuit where there is a harbour, which bounds the figure of the arc at that extremity, the island Peuce is conspicuous, inhabited by the Troglodytæ, and Peuci, and other inferior tribes, and we come also to Histros, formerly a city of great power, and to Tomi, Apollonia, Anchialos, Odissos, and many others on the Thracian coast.
44. But the Danube, rising near Basle on the borders of the Tyrol, extending over a wider space, and receiving on his way nearly sixty navigable rivers, pours through the Scythian territory by seven mouths into the Black Sea.
45. The first mouth (according to the Greek interpretation of the names) is at the island of Peuce, which we have mentioned; the second is at Naracustoma, the third at Calonstoma, the fourth at Pseudostoma. The Boreonstoma and the Sthenostoma, are much smaller, and the seventh is large and black-looking like a bog.
46. But the whole sea, all around, is full of mists and shoals, and is sweeter than seas in general, because by the evaporation of moisture the air is often thick and dense, and its waters are tempered by the immensity of the rivers which fall into it; and it is full of shifting shallows, because the number of the streams which surround it pour in mud and lumps of soil.
47. And it is well known that fish flock in large shoals to its most remote extremities that they may spawn and rear their young more healthfully, in consequence of the salubrity of the water; while the hollow caverns, which are very numerous there, protect them from voracious monsters. For nothing of the kind is ever seen in this sea, except some small dolphins, and they do no harm.