Corpus of Electronic Texts Edition
The Gaelic Maundeville (Author: John Maundeville)
paragraph 22
In that country there be full high hills, such as Mount Olympus, which parteth Macedonia and Thrace, and it is so high towards the air that it is impossible to describe it. And there is another hill therein which is called Athos, and the shadow of this mountain reacheth to Mount Olympus,—there are three score and seven miles from it,—and above that mountain the air is so pure, that men never get wind there; and it is so dry that no animal in the world can remain alive therein. And the wise
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men of that country say that, once upon a time, philosophers went with a (moistened) sponge in their nostrils for the dryness of the air, and wrote letters with their fingers in the dust of the tops of those hills, and at the year's end, when they came (again), they saw the same letters, and they found them without defect small or great; and hence it seems to them that those hills are higher than the air that is nearer to us.