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94 HISTORY OF GREECE. of being transporte 1 across the river ; where a considerable body of horse were seen assembled on the opposite bank. 1 Though here disturbed only by some desultory attacks on the part of the Persians, who burnt several of the villages which lay in their forward line of march, the Greeks became seriously em- barrassed whither to direct their steps ; for on their left flank was the Tigris, so deep that their spears found no bottom, and on their right, mountains of exceeding height. As the generals and the lochages were taking counsel, a Rhodian soldier came to them with a proposition for transporting the whole army across to the other bank of the river by means of inflated skins, which could be furnished in abundance by the animals in their possession. But this ingenious scheme, in itself feasible, was put out of the ques- tion by the view of the Persian cavalry on the opposite bank ; and as the villages in their front had been burnt, the army had no choice except to return back one day's march to those in which they had before halted. Here the generals again deliberated, questioning all their prisoners as to the different bearings of the country. The road from the south was that in which they had already marched from Babylon and Media; that to the west- ward, going to Lydia and Ionia, was barred to them by the inter- posing Tigris; eastward (they were informed) was the way to Ekbatana and Susa ; northward, lay the rugged and inhospitable mountains of the Karduchians, fierce freemen who despised the Great King, and defied all his efforts to conquer them ; having once destroyed a Persian invading army of one hundred and twenty thousand men. On the other side of Karduchia, however, lay the rich Persian satrapy of Armenia, wherein both the Euph- rates and the Tigris could be crossed near their sources, and from whence could choose their farther course easily towards Greece Like Mysia, Pisidia, and other mountainous regions, Karduchia was a free territory surrounded on all sides by the dominions of the Great King, who reigned only in the cities and on the plains.* 1 Xen. Anab. iii, 4, 36-49 ; iii, 5, 3. 1 Xen. Anab. iii, 5 ; iv, 1, 3. Probably the place where the Greeks quit ted the Tigris to strike into the Karduchian mountains, was the neighbor- hood of Jezireh ibn Omar, the ancient Bezabde. It is here that farther march, up the eastern side of the Tigris, is rendered impracticable by the