herodotus

it produces much greater heat than at midday in Hellas, so that it issaid that then they drench themselves with water. Midday however hasabout equal degree of heat with the Indians as with other men, whileafter midday their sun becomes like the morning sun with other men,and after this, as it goes further away, it produces still greatercoolness, until at last at sunset it makes the air very cool indeed.105. When the Indians have come to the place with bags, they fill themwith the sand and ride away back as quickly as they can, for forthwiththe ants, perceiving, as the Persians allege, by the smell, begin topursue them: and this animal, they say, is superior to every othercreature in swiftness, so that unless the Indians got a start in theircourse, while the ants were gathering together, not one of them wouldescape. So then the male camels, for they are inferior in speed ofrunning to the females, if they drag behind are even let loose[95]from the side of the female, one after the other;[96] the femaleshowever, remembering the young which they left behind, do not show anyslackness in their course.[97] Thus it is that the Indians get mostpart of the gold, as the Persians say; there is however other goldalso in their land obtained by digging, but in smaller quantities.106. It seems indeed that the extremities of the inhabited world hadallotted to them by nature the fairest things, just as it was the lotof Hellas to have its seasons far more fairly tempered than otherlands: for first, India is the most distant of inhabited lands towardsthe East, as I have said a little above, and in this land not only theanimals, birds as well as four-footed beasts, are much larger than inother places (except the horses, which are surpassed by those of Mediacalled Nessaian), but also there is gold in abundance there, some gotby digging, some brought down by rivers, and some carried off as Iexplained just now: and there also the trees which grow wild producewool which surpasses in beauty and excellence that from sheep, and theIndians wear clothing obtained from these trees. 107. Then againArabia is the furthest of inhabited lands in the direction of themidday, and in it alone of all lands grow frankincense and myrrh andcassia and cinnamon and gum-mastich. All these except myrrh are gotwith difficulty by the Arabians. Frankincense they collect by burningthe storax, which is brought thence to the Hellenes by the Phenicians,by burning this, I say, so as to produce smoke they take it; for thesetrees which produce frankincense are guarded by winged serpents, smallin size and of various colours, which watch in great numbers abouteach tree, of the same kind as those which attempt to invadeEgypt:[97a] and they cannot be driven away from the trees by any otherthing but only the smoke of storax. 108. The Arabians say also thatall the world would have been by this time filled with these serpents,if that did not happen with regard to them which I knew happened withregard to vipers: and it seems that the Divine Providence, as indeed