Section 19

3 Sc. to dry in the sun. 1 K. is the infernal river which the souls have to cross after death; its waters are figured as dragons and its waves as scorpions (§ 51). Ulai is also a river. If it is in any way connected with the Eulæus from which the Kings of Persia are fabled to have drunk, the sense is hard to find. It is more probably an infernal stream, at any rate one from which the evil fishers drank. 1 Uncertain. Père Anastase of Baghdad informs L. that now-a-days a bell is attached to the rudder-bar; but here it seems to have some connection with the axe. 1 L. suggests so as to seek the spawning places or in order to hide themselves. 2 The numerous gaps which have to be left owing to uncertainty of translation make a number of the above sentences unintelligible. The concluding paragraphs are presumably an allegory of the attractions of false religions, and can hardly be thought to be part of the speech of the fishers. 3 Presumably as the waves made by the foundering ships reach the shore.