quently he could get no pilot for the voyage, and the navigation of the river was very difficult. On the day after the start a storm arose, and the wind blowing right against the stream made the river hollow[1] and shattered the hulls of the vessels violently, so that most of his ships were injured, and some of the thirty-oared galleys were entirely broken up. But they succeeded in running them aground before they quite fell to pieces in the water; and others were therefore constructed. He then sent the quickest of the light-armed troops into the land beyond the river's bank and captured some Indiang, who from this time piloted him down the channel. But when they arrived at the place where the river expands, so that where it was widest it extended 200 stades, a strong wind blew from the outer sea, and the oars could hardly be raised in the swell ; they therefore took refuge again in a canal into which his pilots conducted them.
CHAPTER XIX.
Voyage down the Indus into the Sea.
While their vessels were moored here, the phenomenon of the ebb and flow of the tide in the great sea occurred, so that their ships were left upon dry ground. This caused Alexander and his companions no small alarm, inasmuch as they were previously quite unacquainted with it. But they were much more alarmed when, the time coming round again, the water approached and the hulls of the vessels were raised aloft.[2] The ships which it caught settled in the mud were raised aloft without any damage,
- ↑ I.e. caused a heavy swell of waters. Cf. Apollonius Rhodius, ii. 595; Polybius, i. 60, 6. This wind was the south-west monsoon.
- ↑ Cf. Curtius (ix. 35, 36); Caesar (Bell. Gall. iv. 29). τα σκάφη εμετεωριζοντο. Arrian does not comply with the Attic rule, that the plural neuter should take a verb in the singular. Compare ii. 20, 8; v. 17, 6 and 7; etc.
