To face [page 121].
After the corpse had been washed, it was borne to its resting-place, a considerable crowd of Dorians following in the rear, amongst them a large proportion of women, who kept up loud cries of lamentation. The cave in which we laid the body was very deep, but by no means lofty; in it we left not only the body, but the planks and the two oars which had formed the bier. When the opening had been closed by piling up a heap of large and heavy stones, Hanno, in a solemn voice, made an invocation to Menath, Hokh, and Rhadamath, the judges of the souls in Cheol.
All these three gods of our nation are known to the Dorians, who call them by the names of Minos, Eacus, and Rhadamanthus. They believe that Minos, previous to his appointment as a judge in the infernal regions, was a king of Crete, and that, being a skilful navigator, he had sailed as far as the mainland to the Ionians, who, by way of tribute, gave him a number of boys and girls. With regard to Rhadamanthus, they suppose that he was brought to the island of Chalcis by the Phœnician demi-gods; but the truth is, that they have made some strange confusion between the god himself and the Sidonian sailors through whom they had become acquainted with his existence. In the same way, I believe, that Europa (the goddess who was carried off by Zeus) and Ariadne (known first to one of the demi-gods, and then to Dionysus, the god of rivers) are nothing more than other names for Ashtoreth, surviving from the period when the Phœnicians first imported wine to their shores. From us, too, they have derived their knowledge of Khousor Phtah, the god of the forge, whom they call Phtos or Phaistos; and in short, whatever familiarity they have either with literature, wine, or with the use of metals, all seems to have been derived from the Sidonians. As for our own knowledge, that (according to our ancestors long, long ago) was obtained from the Egyptians, and the Egyptians derived theirs from the still more ancient Atlantes, who, when the Great Sea was still to the south of Libya, came from lands in the West that have since passed away, traversing Ethiopia in their course. How true it is, that though nation may follow upon nation, the gods are immortal!
The Dorian people gave us their word of honour that the cavern in which we had buried our companion should never be desecrated, and we returned to our ships, which remained hung with black for the remainder of the day.
Towards evening Hadlai and his party made their appearance, bringing a goodly supply of purchases. Jonah, marching along with a consequential air, and encircled by a crowd who had followed him down from the mountains was carrying a calf upon his back.
"What are you going to do with that calf?" I asked.
"Eat it," he said; "I have earned it."
"How? by blowing your trumpet?"
"No; not by blowing my trumpet, but by wrestling: they matched their strongest against me, and I levelled them all; and so I won my calf. A capital country is this! I will knock them over, every one, if only they will give me a calf every time."