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8Others, running over veins of fat earth, issue forth impregnated with oil: as at Soloe, a city of Cilicia, a river called Liparis, in which those that swim or wash, are, as it were, anointed by the water. In Ethiopia, also, there is a lake which anoints those that swim therein; and in India there is another, which, when the sky is clear, emits a great quantity of oil. At Carthage there is a spring, on the surface of which swims an oil of the smell of cedar dust, with which they anoint cattle. In the island of Zacynthus, and about Dyrrachium and Apollonia, are springs which throw up a great quantity of pitch with the water. The vast lake at Babylon, called the Asphaltic pool, contains floating bitumen, with which, and with bricks of baked earth, Semiramis built the wall round Babylon. At Joppa, also, in Syria, and in Numidian Arabia, are lakes of immense size, yielding large masses of bitumen, which are taken away by the inhabitants of the neighbourhood.
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