Kitap 7
3.18
The whole of this country, which reaches to the seacoast extending from the DnieperThe Borysthenes. to the Palus Maeotis, is subject to severe winters; so also are the most northern of the districts bordering on the sea, as the mouth of the Palus Maeotis, and farther that of the Dnieper and the head of the Gulf of Tamyraca, or Carcinites,The Gulf of Perecop, called also Olou-Degniz. Gossellin. which washes the isthmusThe Isthmus of Perecop, which connects the Peninsula of Crimea, the ancient Taurica Chersonesus. of the Magna Chersonesus. The intense cold of the districts inhabited, notwithstanding their being plains, is manifest, for they rear no asses, as that animal is too susceptible of cold; some of their oxen are without horns by nature, of the others they file off the horns, as a part most susceptible of injury from cold. Their horses are diminutive and their sheep large. Their brazen vessels are split with the frosts, and their contents frozen into a solid mass. However, the rigour of the frosts may be best illustrated by the phenomena which are common in the neighbourhood of the embouchure of the Palus Maeotis;The Strait of Zabache, or Iéni-Kalé. for the passage from Panticapaeum,Panticapaeum, now Kertsch or Wospor in Europe. across to Phanagoria,Phanagoria was on the Asiatic coast of the Bosphorus. is at times performed in waggons, thus being both a sea passageWe entirely agree with Kramer in favouring Coray’s emendation of πλοῦν for πηλόν, the reading of MSS. and an overland route [as the season may determine]. There are also fish which are taken in the ice by means of a round net called a gangama, and especially a kind of sturgeon called antacaeus,Herodotus, book iv. chap. 53, says this fishing was carried on in the Dnieper. Aelian, de Natur. Animal. book xiv. chap. 26, refers it to the Danube. nearly the size of a dolphin. It is related that Neoptolemus, the general of Mithridates,Strabo has before alluded to this fact, book ii. chap. i. § 16, p. 114. defeated the barbarians during summer-time in a naval engagement in this very strait, and during the winter in a cavalry action. They say that about the Bosphorus the vine is hidden away in the earth in winter, great mounds of mould being piled over it [to preserve it from the frost]. They also report that the heats are excessive, [this may be accounted for in several ways,] perhaps men’s bodies not being accustomed to them, feel them the more; perhaps the plains are at that time unrefreshed by winds; or perhaps the thickness of the air is heated to a great degree, similar to the way in which the misty air is affected in times when a parhelion is observed.
