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.154 NOTES.trifler may object that the word in question is Helrvjt, a riverin Thrace. That this idea has generally prevailed, 1 readilygrant; but is it once to be imagined that Abaris, a Hyperborean,would celebrate a river in Thrace, which he probably neversaw; and is it not infinitely more probable, that, with the predilectionpeculiar to all poets, he celebrated his own nativestream. His other treatise on the removal of Apollo to the Hv,perboreans, was founded on fact, and one in which the honourof his country, and its antiquities, were highly concerned. Butit may also be objected, that Abaris celebrated the marriage ofa river, and consequently the whole is a fiction. In the Greekand Roman mythology, such instances are almost infinite. Inour own days, Northesk. a river, Aberdeen, a city. Queensberry,a hill, &c. are the signatures and titles of eminent noble,men; and that a man and a river had, in Abaris' time, the samename, is not at all to be wondered at. Local names are, of allothers, the most numerous. The names Abaris, JJcbrm, andHebrides, divested of their Greek and Roman peculiarities, areAbar^ Ebr, and Ebrid. If in the Hebrides (unquestionablythe Hyperborean island of Diodorus), a river of i\\Q name Ebrcould be found, with such a temple as that described by Eratos.thenes standing near it, the country of Abaris might still be determined.Nay, if such a river could be found near the noblejudicial circle of Clacharneach,! would even admit that it mightbe the temple described by Eratosthenes. It was certainly morepardonable in a Greek to mistake this circle for a temple, thanfor Mr. Pinkarton, with infinitely better means of information,to mistake all the Druidical temples in the world for Gothiccourts ofjustice.Note LXXVIf.—Page 22S.The lesser circumjacent islands.— /owe, one of these islands,deserves particular attention, though on a different account fromthat mentioned by Toland. Its history presents to us a strangecompound of Druidism and Christianity. The original name ishis.Druineach, i. e. " The islaud of the Druids," Close to