1Things which we usually set out on a journey and cross the sea to get to know, we neglect when they are placed before our eyes, whether because nature has so arranged it that we are incurious about what is nearest and pursue what is far off, or because desire for all things grows faint when the opportunity is easy, or because we put off, as if we shall often see it, what we are able to see whenever we wish to look. 2Whatever the reason, there are a great many things in our city and near the city which we know not only not by sight but not even by hearsay, which, if Achaia, Egypt, Asia or any other land fertile in wonders and quick to advertise them had produced, we would have heard of, read about and visited.
3I myself at least recently heard of and saw at the same time something which I had neither heard of nor seen before. 3My wife's grandfather had asked me to inspect his estates at Ameria. 3As I was walking over them I was shown a lake lying below, called Vadimon; 3at the same time some incredible things were told me about it. 4I went to the lake itself. 4The lake is shaped like a wheel lying on its side and is even all round: no bay, no irregularity, everything measured and equal, as though hollowed and cut out by the hand of a craftsman. 4Its colour is paler than sky-blue, greener and deeper; 4it has a smell of sulphur and a medicinal taste; 4it has a power by which broken bones are knitted.
4Its size is moderate, yet such that it feels the winds and swells with waves. 5There is no boat on it — for it is sacred — but islands float on it, all grassy with reeds and rushes and whatever else the more fertile marsh and that very edge of the lake produce. 5Each has its own shape, as its own size; 5all have their edges worn away, because they often strike either the shore or one another, and wear and are worn. 5All have the same height, the same lightness; 5for they go down with a shallow base, in the shape of a keel. 6This can be seen from every side, as they are at the same time held up by the water and submerged in it.
6Sometimes they are joined and linked together and look like a continuous land, sometimes they are scattered by contending winds; sometimes, left alone in a calm, they float about singly. 7Often the smaller ones cling to the larger, like skiffs to cargo ships, often the larger and smaller take up a sort of race and contest among themselves; 7again, all driven to the same spot, they extend the land where they have stopped, and now on this side, now on that, they give back and take away the lake, and only when they hold the middle do they not shrink it. 8It is well known that cattle, following the grass, are accustomed to walk onto those islands as if onto the edge of the bank, and do not realise that the ground is moving until, carried away from the shore as if put on board and embarked, they take fright at the lake poured round them on all sides; 8soon, stepping off where the wind has carried them, they no more feel that they have gone down than they felt that they had gone up.
9The same lake discharges into a river, which, after showing itself to the eyes for a little while, plunges into a cave and runs deep underground, and if it has received anything before it was drawn under, it keeps it and brings it out again. 10I have written this to you because I believed it to be no less unknown to you than to me, and no less welcome. 10For you too, like me, are delighted by nothing so much as the works of nature. 10Farewell.