So Perseus started on his journey, going dry-shod over land and
sea; and his heart was high and joyful, for the winged sandals bore
him each day a seven days' journey.

And he went by Cythnus, and by Ceos, and the pleasant Cyclades to
Attica; and past Athens and Thebes, and the Copaic lake, and up the
vale of Cephissus, and past the peaks of OEta and Pindus, and over
the rich Thessalian plains, till the sunny hills of Greece were
behind him, and before him were the wilds of the north. Then he
passed the Thracian mountains, and many a barbarous tribe, Paeons
and Dardans and Triballi, till he came to the Ister stream, and the
dreary Scythian plains. And he walked across the Ister dry-shod,
and away through the moors and fens, day and night toward the bleak
north-west, turning neither to the right hand nor the left, till he
came to the Unshapen Land, and the place which has no name.

And seven days he walked through it, on a path which few can tell;
for those who have trodden it like least to speak of it, and those
who go there again in dreams are glad enough when they awake; till
he came to the edge of the everlasting night, where the air was
full of feathers, and the soil was hard with ice; and there at last
he found the three Gray Sisters, by the shore of the freezing sea,
nodding upon a white log of drift-wood, beneath the cold white
winter moon; and they chaunted a low song together, 'Why the old
times were better than the new.'

There was no living thing around them, not a fly, not a moss upon
the rocks. Neither seal nor sea-gull dare come near, lest the ice