CHAPTER XVI
Now, with regard to fountains, it is to be noted that Nepenthe, an islet of volcanic stone rising out of the blue Mediterranean, has never—for all its natural attractions—been renowned for cool springs and bubbling streamlets. There is, to be sure, a charming couplet in some old humanist about LYMPHA NEPENTHI; but modern scholars are disposed to think either that the text is corrupt and that the writer was picturing an imaginary NYMPHA—some laughing sea-lady—or else that he merely indulged in one of those poetic flights which are a feature of the literature of his period. For whatever the cause may be—whether internal fires have scorched up the natural humours of the soil, or whether the waters of Nepenthe are of such peculiar heaviness that, instead of flowing upwards in the
