And some upbraided the dark witch-woman, and some said, 'Nay, we are her debtors still; without her we should never have won the fleece.' But most of them bit their lips in silence, for they feared the witch's spells.
And now the sea grew calmer, and the sun shone out once more, and the heroes thrust the ship off the sand-bank, and rowed forward on their weary course under the guiding of the dark witch-maiden, into the wastes of the unknown sea.
Whither they went I cannot tell, nor how they came to Circe's isle.

Some say that they went to the westward, and up the Ister {130a} stream, and so came into the Adriatic, dragging their ship over the snowy Alps.

And others say that they went southward, into the Red Indian Sea, and past the sunny lands where spices grow, round AEthiopia toward the West; and that at last they came to Libya, and dragged their ship across the burning sands, and over the hills into the Syrtes, where the flats and quicksands spread for many a mile, between rich Cyrene and the Lotus-eaters' shore.

But all these are but dreams and fables, and dim hints of unknown lands.
But all say that they came to a place where they had to drag their ship across the land nine days with ropes and rollers, till they came into an unknown sea.

And the best of all the old songs tells us how they went away toward the North, till they came to the slope of Caucasus, where it sinks into the sea; and to the narrow Cimmerian Bosphorus, {130b} where the Titan swam across upon the bull; and thence into the lazy waters of the still Maeotid lake.