Page:History of Greece Vol IX.djvu/55

MAKCH DOWN THE EUPHRATES. 33 the provision dealers behind, as had before happened at Tarsus, in Kilikia; 1 since the army here increased their supplies for the onward march. All that they could obtain was required, and was indeed insufficient, for the trying journey which awaited them. For thirteen successive days, and ninety computed parasangs, did they march along the left bank of the Euphrates, without provis- ions, and even without herbage except in some few places. Their flour was exhausted, so that the soldiers lived for some days alto- gether upon meat, while many baggage-animals perished of hunger. Moreover the ground was often heavy and difficult, full of hills and narrow valleys, requiring the personal efforts of every man to push the cars and waggons at particular junctures ; efforts in which the Persian courtiers of Cyrus, under his express orders, took zealous part, toiling in the dirt with their ornamented attire. 3 After these thirteen days of hardship, they reached Pylse ; near the entrance of the cultivated territory of Babylonia, where they seem to have halted five or six days to rest and refresh. 3 There 1 Xen. Anab. i, 2, 24. 2 Xen. Anab. i, 5, 4-8. 3 I infer that the army halted here five or six days, from the story after- wards told respecting the Ambrakiot Silanus, the prophet of the army; who, on sacrificing, had told Cyrus that his brother would not fight for ten days (i, 7, 16). This sacrifice must have been offered, I imagine, during the halt not during the distressing march which preceded. The ten days named by Silanus, expired on the fourth day after they left Pylae. It is in reference to this portion of the course of the Euphrates, from the Chaboras southward down by Anah and Hit (the ancient Is, noticed by Herodotus, and still celebrated from its unexhausted supply of bitumen), between latitude 35j and 34 that Colonel Chesney, in his Report on the Navigation of the Euphrates (p. 2), has the following remarks : " The scenery above Hit, in itself very picturesque, is greatly heightened, as one is carried along the current, by the frequent recurrence, at very short intervals, of ancient irrigating aqueducts ; these beautiful specimens of art and durability are attributed by the Arabs to the times of the ignorant, meaning (as is expressly understood) the Persians, when fire-worshippers, and in possession of the world. They literally cover both banks, and prova that the borders of the Euphrates were once thickly inhabited by a people far advanced indeed in the application of hydraulics to domestic purposes, of the first and greatest utility the transport of water. The greater por- tion is now more or less in ruins, but some have been repaired, and kept up for use either tc grind corn or to irrigate. The aqueducts are of stone, firmly cemented, narrowing to about two feet or twenty inches at top, placed at VOL. ix. 2* 3oc.