Kitap 4
39
These are the true causes of the outflow of the Pontus, which do not depend for their credit on the stories of merchants, but upon the actual observation of nature, which is the most accurate method discoverable.
40
As I have started this topic I must not, as most historians do, leave any point undiscussed, or only barely stated. My object is rather to give information, and to clear up doubtful points for my readers. This is the peculiarity of the present day, in which every sea and land has been thrown open to travellers; and in which, therefore, one can no longer employ the evidence of poets and fabulists, as my predecessors have done on very many points, offering, as Heraclitus says, tainted witnesses to disputed facts,—but I must try to make my narrative in itself carry conviction to my readers.
