[208] D’Anville supposes that he means the headland called Cande-Noss or Kanin-Noss, in the White Sea. Parisot, who thinks that Pliny had no idea of the regions which lie in those high latitudes, supposes that he refers to Domnes-Ness in the Baltic, and that by the Carambucis he means the river Niemen.
[209] Ansart thinks that he means the Dwina, which falls into the Gulf of Archangel.
[210] Previously mentioned in c. [7].
[211] For a full description of them, see B. iv. c. 26.
[212] See the Note to c. [7], p. 15. This description is borrowed from that given by Herodotus. Their sacred character has been explained as referring to the class or caste of priests among this Eastern people, whoever they may have been.
[213] Ansart thinks that the Cicianthi, the Georgi, and the Amazons, inhabited the modern governments of Archangel and Vologda. It seems almost akin to rashness to hazard a conjecture.
[214] It has been already stated that the Caspian Sea was, in one portion of it, so called, and in another the Hyrcanian Sea.
[215] His meaning is, that the Scythian ocean communicates on the northern shores of Asia with the Caspian Sea. Hardouin remarks, that Patrocles, the commander of the Macedonian fleet, was the first to promulgate this notion, he having taken the mouth of the river Volga for a narrow passage, by means of which the Scythian or Northern Ocean made its way into the Caspian Sea.
[216] The country of the Cadusii, in the mountainous district of Media Atropatene, on the south-west shores of the Caspian Sea, between the parallels of 390 and 370 north latitude. This district probably corresponds with the modern district of Gilan.
[217] Now the Syr-Daria or Yellow River, and watering the barren steppes of the Kirghiz-Cossacks. It really discharges itself into the Sea of Aral, and not the Caspian.