Oddbean

haha, nah the dogs and the styx and Charon are in the story because Tartarus was a volcano on an island where people kept dogs lots of very interesting stuff about these islands too... they get mentions in several ancient greek texts, i think specifically this one, Madeira, and nearby porto santo are known as the "blessed isles" because of their perfect weather... the official portuguese government story is that there is only 600 years of history of humans living here (and on the canaries, cape verde, and the azores) but there is PYRAMIDS on the canaries, and so many signs of ancient human activity everywhere here, 600 years, sure, that stuff is really obvious (all the terracing that has almost completely overgrown and is long out of use) but there is older signs of land being flattened out here and there and old tracks and gouged out stone yeah, reminds me, i hope i get myself nice and fit by the end of the year i want to climb around randomly in the higher mountain areas in the centre of the island, go right off the track with a scythe in the bag to cut through the odd bit of difficult scrub and see what i see, i know there is caves and all sorts that a lot of it may not have been seen in hundreds if not thousands of years, would be fun, anyway, just to really get lost up there, not like it's hard to find the way out