[118] In the Morea, near the modern Navarino.
[119a] At the mouth of the Bay of Cattaro.
[119b] This story—whatever belief we may give to its details—is one of many which make it tolerably certain that a large snake (Python) still lingered in Eastern Europe. Huge tame snakes were kept as sacred by the Macedonian women; and one of them (according to Lucian) Peregrinus Proteus, the Cagliostro of his time, fitted with a linen mask, and made it personate the god Æsculapius. In the “Historia Lausiaca,” cap. lii. is an account by an eye-witness of a large snake in the Thebaid, whose track was “as if a beam had been dragged along the sand.” It terrifies the Syrian monks: but the Egyptian monk sets to work to kill it, saying that he had seen much larger—even up to fifteen cubits.
[121] Now Capo St. Angelo and the island of Cerigo, at the southern point of Greece.
[123b] Probably dedicated to the Paphian Venus.
[130] The lives of these two hermits and that of St. Cuthbert will be given in a future number.
[131] Sihor, the black river, was the ancient name of the Nile, derived from the dark hue of its waters.
[159] Ammianus Marcellinus, Book xxv. cap. 9.
[160] By Dr. Burgess.