XVI.] HIS DESCRIPTIONS OF FOUNTAINS, 355

as the historian, and by this he is similarly led into digres-
sions, which frequently contain information on points which lie
beyond the range of his immediate subject. His accuracy has
generally been acknowledged by those who have followed in
his footsteps. When ancient sites are cleared by the spade
of the excavator from the soil which has accumulated in the
course of ages, the buildings whose foundations are thus revealed
are found to correspond with remarkable closeness to Pausanias1
descriptions. In wandering about amongst them with his work
as your handbook, "you feel that you are following an invisible
guide — a ghost among ghosts1."

Though Pausanias, as has been said above, had no interest
in geography for its own sake, yet owing to his
love of curious objects, especially when they were trations of

in any way connected with mythological associa-
tions, he was led to dwell on numerous phenomena,
which illustrate at least the physical branch of that subject. This
was the case in a marked manner with springs of
... • ,1 • - ., Fountains.
water, which are in all countries a fertile source
of legends. Thus in one passage he notices the different colours
which these display in various places. One of
them, he says, in the neighbourhood of Joppa
in Palestine had a blood-red hue; another, in the
district of Atarneus opposite Lesbos, flowed with black water ;
while a third, in the neighbourhood of Rome on the further
side of the Anio, was white. The last-named source was no
doubt the Aquae Albulae near Tibur, which from its milk-white
sulphureous water is known as La Solfatara at the present day;
and its low temperature, on which Pausanias remarks, is still a
characteristic feature, notwithstanding that vapours arise from its
surface. Above all, he draws attention to the c grey-green ' water
of Thermopylae (yXavKorarov vSwp)— an epithet, the truth of
which may be verified at the present day, since the water of
these sources, which is very clear, has that colour owing to the
sediment with which the bed of the channels in which it runs
is incrusted3. Elsewhere he draws attention to the warm springs
1 Dean Stanley, in Sir T. Wyse's Impressions of Greece, p. 316.
9 Pausan. 4. 35. 9, 10.
23—2