Histories

Off their coast (the Carthaginians say) lies an island called Cyrauis, twenty-five miles long and narrow across, accessible from the mainland; it is full of olives and vines.

It is said that there is a lake on this island from which the maidens of the country draw gold-dust out of the mud on feathers smeared with pitch. I do not know whether this is true; I just write what is said. But all things are possible; for I myself saw pitch drawn from the water of a pool in +Zakinthos [20.9,37.783] (inhabited place), Nisos Zakinthos, Zakinthos, Ionian Islands, Greece, Europe Zacynthus.

The pools there are numerous; the greatest of them is seventy feet long and broad, and twelve feet deep. Into this they drop a pole with a myrtle branch fastened to its end, and bring up pitch on the myrtle, smelling like asphalt, and for the rest better than the pitch of +Pieria [22.416,40.25] (department), Macedonia, Greece, Europe Pieria. Then they pour it into a pit that they have dug near the pool; and when a fair amount is collected there, they fill their vessels from the pit.

Whatever falls into the pool is carried under the ground and appears again in the sea, which is about a half a mile distant from the pool. So, then, the story that comes from the island lying off the Libyan coast is like the truth, too.