this chariot; and yet, what have we greater than Jupiter? The first part of the road is steep, and such as the horses, though fresh in the morning, can hardly climb. In the middle of the heaven it is high aloft, whence it is often a source of fear, even to myself, to look down upon the sea and the earth, and my breast trembles with fearful apprehensions. The last stage is a steep descent, and requires a sure command of the horses. . . . Besides, the heavens are carried round with a constant rotation, and carrying with them the lofty stars, and whirl them with rapid revolution. Against this I have to contend; and that force which overcomes all other things does not overcome me, and I am carried in a contrary direction to the rapid world."

Here we seem to have a glimpse of some higher and older learning, mixed with the astronomical errors of the day: Ovid supposes the rapid world to move, revolve, one way, while the sun appears to move another.

But Phaeton insists on undertaking the dread task. The doors of Aurora are opened, "her halls filled with roses"; the stars disappear; the Hours yoke the horses, "filled with the juice of ambrosia," the father anoints the face of his son with a hallowed drug that he may the better endure the great heat; the reins are handed him, and the fatal race begins. Phoebus has advised him not to drive too high, or "thou wilt set on fire the signs of the heavens "the constellations ;-nor too low, or he will consume the earth.

"In the mean time the swift Pyroeis, and Eoüs and Ethon, the horses of the sun, and Phlegon, the fourth, fill the air with neighings, sending forth flames, and beat the barriers with their feet. . . . They take the road... they cleave the resisting clouds, and, raised aloft by their wings, they pass by the east winds that had arisen from the same parts. But the weight" (of Phaeton) "was light, and such as the horses of the sun could not feel; and the yoke was deficient of its wonted weight. . Soon as

the steeds had perceived this they rush on and leave the beaten track, and run not in the order in which they did before. He himself becomes alarmed, and knows not which way to turn the reins intrusted to him; nor does he know where the way is, nor, if he did know, could he control them. Then, for the first time, did the cold Triones grow warm with sunbeams, and attempt, in vain, to be dipped in the sea that was forbidden to them. And the Serpent, which is situate next to the icy pole, being before torpid with cold, and formidable to no one, grew warm, and regained new rage for the heat. And they say that thou, Boötes, scoured off in a mighty bustle, although thou wert but slow, and thy cart hindered thee. But when from the height of the skies the unhappy Phaëton looked down upon the earth lying far, very far beneath, he grew pale, and his knees shook with a sudden terror; and, in a light so great, darkness overspread his eyes. And now he could wish that he had never touched the horses of his father; and now he is sorry that he knew his descent, and prevailed in his request; now desiring to be called the son of Merops."

"What can he do? . . . He is stupefied; he neither lets go the reins, nor is able to control them. In his fright, too, he sees strange objects scattered everywhere in various parts of the heavens, and the forms of huge wild beasts. There is a spot where the Scorpion bends his arms into two curves, and, with his tail and claws bending on either side, he extends his limbs through the space of two signs of the zodiac. As soon as the youth beheld him, wet with the sweat of black venom, and threatening wounds with the barbed point of his tail, bereft of sense he let go the reins in a chill of horror."

Compare the course which Ovid tells us Phaëton pursued through the constellations, past the Great Serpent and Bootes, and close to the venomous Scorpion, with the orbit of Donati's comet in 1858, as given in Schellen's great work.*

"Spectrum Analysis," p. 391.

The path described by Ovid shows that the comet came from the north part of the heavens; and this agrees with what we know of the Drift; the markings indicate that it came from the north.

The horses now range at large; "they go through

COURSE OF DONATI'S COMET.

fixed in the sky"; they approach the earth.

"The moon, too, wonders that her brother's horses run lower than her own, and the scorched clouds send forth smoke, As each region is most elevated it is caught by the flames, and cleft, it makes vast chasms, its moisture being carried away. The grass grows pale; the trees, with their foliage, are burned up, and the dry, standing corn affords fuel for its own destruction. But I am complaining of trifling ills. Great cities perish, together with their fortifications, and the flames turn whole nations into ashes; woods, together with mountains, are on fire. Athos burns, and the Cilician Taurus, and Tmolus, and Eta, and Ida, now dry but once most famed for its springs, and Helicon, the resort of the virgin Muses, and Hamus, not yet called Eagrian. Etna burns intensely with redoubled flames, and Parnassus, with its two summits, and Eryx, and Cynthus, and Orthrys, and Rhodope, at length to be despoiled of its snows, and Mimas, and Dindyma, and Mycale, and Citharon, created for the sacred rites. Nor does its cold avail even Scythia; Caucasus is on fire, and Ossa with Pindus, and Olympus, greater than them both, and the lofty Alps, and the cloudbearing Apennines.

"Then, indeed, Phaëton beholds the world set on fire on all sides, and he can not endure heat so great, and he inhales with his mouth scorching air, as though from a deep furnace, and perceives his own chariot to be on fire. And neither is he able now to bear the ashes and the emitted embers; and on every side he is involved in a heated smoke. Covered with a pitchy darkness, he knows not whither he is going, nor where he is, and is hurried away at the pleasure of the winged steeds. They believe that it was then that the nations of the Ethiopians contracted their black hue, the blood being attracted into the surface of the body. Then was Libya" (Sahara ?) “made dry by the heat, the moisture being carried off; then with disheveled hair the Nymphs lamented the springs and the lakes. Boeotia bewails Dirce, Argos Amymone, and Ephyre the waters of Pirene. Nor do rivers that

have banks distant remain secure. Tanais smokes in the midst of its waters, and the aged Peneus and Teuthrantian Caïcus and rapid Ismenus. . . . The Babylonian Euphrates, too, was on fire, Orontes was in flames, and the swift Thermodon and Ganges and Phasis and Ister. Alpheus boils; the banks of Spercheus burn; and the gold which Tagus carries with its stream melts in the flames. The rer-birds, too, which made famous the Mæonian banl with song, grew hot in the middle of Cayster. The Nile, affrighted, fled to the remotest parts of the earth and concealed his head, which still lies hid; his seven last mouths are empty, seven channels without any streams. The same fate dries up the Ismarian rivers, Hebeus together with Strymon, and the Hesperian streams, the Rhine, the Rhone, and the Po, and the Tiber, to which was promised the sovereignty of the world."

In other words, according to these Roman traditions here poetized, the heat dried up the rivers of Europe, Asia, and Africa; in short, of all the known world.

Ovid continues:

"All the ground bursts asunder, and through the chinks the light penetrates into Tartarus, and startles the infernal king with his spouse."

We have seen that during the Drift age the great clefts in the earth, the fiords of the north of Europe and America, occurred, and we shall see hereafter that, according to a Central American legend, the red rocks boiled up through the earth at this time.

"The ocean, too, is contracted," says Ovid, "and that which lately was sea is a surface of parched sand, and the mountains which the deep sea has covered, start up and increase the number of the scattered Cyclades" (a cluster of islands in the Egean Sea, surrounding Delos as though with a circle, whence their name); "the fishes sink to the bottom, and the crooked dolphins do not care to raise themselves on the surface into the air as usual. The bodies of sea-calves float lifeless on their backs on