After some little time their van approached a ridge of high wooded ground, which is one of the offshoots of the great Hercynian forest, and is situated between the modern villages of Driburg and Bielefeld.

Accordingly, the Volcae Tectosages seized on those parts of Germany which are the most fruitful [and lie] around the Hercynian forest (which, I perceive, was known by report to Eratosthenes and some other Greeks, and which they call Orcynia) and settled there.

XXV.The breadth of this Hercynian forest, which has been referred to above, is to a quick traveller, a journey of nine days.

31 Orch[)o]m[)e]nus, a town in Boeotia, Orcomeno, C. iii. 5 5 Orcynia, the name given by Greek writers to the Hercynian forest Orget[=o]rix, G. i. 2, 3 Or[)i]cum, a town in Epirus, Orco, or Orcha, C. iii. 11, 12 Osc[=e]nses, the people of Osca, a town in Hispania Tarraconensis, now Huescar, C. i. 60 Os[=i]sm[)i]i, an ancient people of Gaul, one of the Gentes Armoricae.

34 Rhaetia, the country of the Grisons, on the Alps, near the Hercynian Forest Rhenus, the Rhine, a large and famous river in Germany, which it formerly divided from Gaul.

By his own choice he is wandering in a forest all but pathless, ubi passim Pallantes error recto de tramite pellit; and a forest not of sixty days' journey, like that old Hercynian forest of Caesar's time, but a forest which sixty generations have not availed to traverse or familiarise in any one direction....

For six months Boon and his companions enjoyed such hunting as had hardly fallen to men of their race since the Germans came out of the Hercynian forest.

A glimpse of such sweet life I saw when, from the melancholy walls 210 Of Goslar, once imperial, I renewed My daily walk along that wide champaign, [U] That, reaching to her gates, spreads east and west, And northwards, from beneath the mountainous verge Of the Hercynian forest, [V] Yet, hail to you 215 Moors, mountains, headlands, and ye hollow vales, Ye

[Footnote V: 'Hercynian forest'.(See Cæsar, 'B. G.' vi. 24, 25.)