Note 1 — Chapter VIII

The vessels glided to the harmony of the twanged strings into the broad canal. It was very full of water; the banks were flooded. Reeds tall as a man, biblos and cyamos, rose like pillars, blossoming during this month with thousands of waving plumes: the leaves of the biblos were long and bending over, as though each were languidly broken; those of the cyamos were round as scales and goblet-deep, stacked one above the other along the stems, like cups.1 In the light on the barges, golden patches glowed among the stalks; and the reeds and rushes blossomed up as though out of molten gold.