316 ESTIMATES OF MOUNTAINS IN ANTIQUITY. [CHAP. shod with flat plates of untanned ox-hide, like timbrels, furnished with spikes on account of the ice and snow. They make the descent by lying on skins together with their property, and sliding down; the same thing is done in the part of Media called Atropatene, and in Mount Masius in Armenia, but there they also place beneath the hides small wooden wheels furnished with spikes1.' A crampon, resembling that which is described in this passage, was found not long ago in an ancient grave near Vladikavkas at the northern foot of the Caucasus, and was brought to England by Mr Douglas Freshfield, who describes it as being e very similar to the crampons depicted by De Saussure as worn 100 years ago by the natives of Chamonix, when they wanted to go over the glaciers of Mont Blanc2.' The wheels, which were said to have been used for tobogganing, probably correspond to those that were attached to the * cyclopodes,1 by the help of which — as we learn from Theophanes the Byzantine historian — Leo the Isaurian, the future emperor of Constantinople, crossed the snows of the Caucasus in the spring-time8. We hear of tobogganing again in Plutarch's Life of Marius, where he describes the Cimbri as shewing off in the presence of the enemy, by placing their shields underneath them, and letting themselves be carried down steep places, where there were slides and openings in the cliffs4. To return, however, to the question from which we originally started of the confusion between the highest accessible and the highest actual points, it is noticeable that this prevailed to a greater extent among the Romans than among the Greeks, on account of the greater individuality of structure of the mountains in the country inhabited by the last-named people. This was the case, not only with many of the higher peaks, such as Ossa, Cyllene and Taygetus, but with those which attained a lower 1 Strabo, ir. 5. 6. 3 A Geogr. Society's Magazine^ vol. 12, p. 463. 8-Theoph. p. 604, ed. Bonn.: 6 riraddpios ...... farepjS&s jtteri KVK\oir68w 4 Pint. Afarius, c. «3 : fouQcv tt TO£S Qvpeofc irXarew faon8&Tes TOW < , etra d^i&res aflrou* fore&povTO /car& KprifwOr