4.

The Pyramus,1083 which has its source in the middle of the plain, is navigable throughout Cataonia. There is a large subterraneous channel, through which the water flows under-ground to a great distance, and then may be seen springing up again to the surface. If an arrow is let down into the pit from above, the resistance of the water is so great that it is scarcely immersed. Although it pursues its course with great1084 depth and breadth, it undergoes an extraordinary contraction of its size by the time it has reached the Taurus. There is also an extraordinary fissure in the mountain, through which the stream is carried. For, as in rocks which have burst and split in two [Pg 280]
[CAS. 536] parts, the projections in one correspond so exactly with the hollows in the other that they might even be fitted together, so here I have seen the rocks at the distance of two or three plethra, overhanging the river on each side, and nearly reaching to the summit of the mountain, with hollows on one side answering to projections on the other. The bed between (the mountains) is entirely rock; it has a deep and very narrow fissure through the middle, so that a dog and a hare might leap across it. This is the channel of the river; it is full to the margin, and in breadth resembles a canal.1085 But on account of the winding of its course, the great contraction of the stream, and the depth of the ravine, a noise, like that of thunder, strikes at a distance on the ears of those who approach it. In passing out through the mountains, it brings down from Cataonia, and from the Cilician plains, so great a quantity of alluvial soil to the sea, that an oracle to the following effect is reported to have been uttered respecting it:

“The time will come, when Pyramus, with its deep whirlpools, by advancing on the sea-shore, will reach the sacred Cyprus.”

Something similar to this takes place in Egypt. The Nile is continually converting the sea into continent by an accumulation of earth; accordingly Herodotus calls Egypt a gift of the river, and Homer says, that the Pharos was formerly out at sea, not as it is at present connected with the mainland of Egypt.