7.126.1
In these parts there are many lions and wild oxen, whose horns are those very long ones which are brought into Hellas. The boundary of the lions' country is the river Nestus which flows through Abdera and the river Achelous which flows through Acarnania. Neither to the east of the Nestus anywhere in the nearer part of Europe, nor to the west of the Achelous in the rest of the mainland, is any lion to be seen, but they are found in the country between those rivers.
ch. 127
7.127.1
When he had arrived at Therma, Xerxes quartered his army there. Its encampment by the sea covered all the space from Therma and the Mygdonian country to the rivers Lydias and Haliacmon, which unite their waters in one stream and so make the border between the Bottiaean and the Macedonian note territory.
7.127.2
In this place the foreigners lay encamped; of the rivers just mentioned, the Cheidorus, which flows from the Crestonaean country, was the only one which could not suffice for the army's drinking but was completely drained by it.
ch. 128
7.128.1
When Xerxes saw from Therma the very great height of the Thessalian mountains Olympus and Ossa and learned that the Peneus flows through them in a narrow pass, which was the way that led into Thessaly, he desired to view the mouth of the Peneus because he intended to march by the upper road through the highland people of Macedonia to the country of the Perrhaebi and the town of Gonnus; note this, it was told him, was the safest way.
7.128.2
He did exactly as he desired. He embarked on a Sidonian ship which he always used when he had some such business in hand, and hoisted his signal for the rest also to put out to sea, leaving his land army where it was. Great wonder took him when he came and viewed the mouth of the Peneus, and calling his guides, he asked them if it were possible to turn the river from its course and lead it into the sea by another way.
ch. 129
7.129.1
Thessaly, as tradition has it, was in old times a lake enclosed all round by high mountains. On its eastern side it is fenced in by the joining of the lower parts of the mountains Pelion and Ossa, to the north by Olympus, to the west by Pindus, towards the south and the southerly wind by Othrys. In the middle, then, of this ring of mountains, lies the vale of Thessaly.
