[Footnote 1:  The north-west wind.]

Here once when Melanippe, daughter of Ares, had gone forth, the hero Heracles caught her by ambuscade and Hippolyte gave him her glistening girdle as her sister’s ransom, and he sent away his captive unharmed.  In the bay of this headland, at the outfall of Thermodon, they ran ashore, for the sea was rough for their voyage.  No river is like this, and none sends forth from itself such mighty streams over the land.  If a man should count every one he would lack but four of a hundred, but the real spring is only one.  This flows down to the plain from lofty mountains, which, men say, are called the Amazonian mountains.  Thence it spreads inland over a hilly country straight forward; wherefrom its streams go winding on, and they roll on, this way and that ever more, wherever best they can reach the lower ground, one at a distance and another near at hand; and many streams are swallowed up in the sand and are without a name; but, mingled with a few, the main stream openly bursts with its arching crest of foam into the Inhospitable Pontus.  And they would have tarried there and have closed in battle with the Amazons, and would have fought not without bloodshed—­for the Amazons were not gentle foes and regarded not justice, those dwellers on the Doeantian plain; but grievous insolence and the works of Ares were all their care; for by race they were the daughters of Ares and the nymph Harmonia, who bare to Ares war-loving maids, wedded to him in the glens of the Acmonian wood—­had not the breezes of Argestes come again from Zeus; and with the wind they left the rounded beach, where the Themiscyreian Amazons were arming for war.  For they dwelt not gathered together in one city, but scattered over the land, parted into three tribes.  In one part dwelt the Themiscyreians, over whom at that time Hippolyte reigned, in another the Lycastians, and in another the dart-throwing Chadesians.  And the next day they sped on and at nightfall they reached the land of the Chalybes.

That folk have no care for ploughing with oxen or for any planting of honey-sweet fruit; nor yet do they pasture flocks in the dewy meadow.  But they cleave the hard iron-bearing land and exchange their wages for daily sustenance; never does the morn rise for them without toil, but amid bleak sooty flames and smoke they endure heavy labour.

And straightway thereafter they rounded the headland of Genetaean Zeus and sped safely past the land of the Tibareni.  Here when wives bring forth children to their husbands, the men lie in bed and groan with their heads close bound; but the women tend them with food, and prepare child-birth baths for them.