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231 ."BUBIEJD" VILLAGES OF KANSAS. 231 Grecian ^geiieral Xenophoa, when on his "^ ever- memorable retreat from Persia about 401 B. 0. with his army of 10,000 marching from sixty miles nor& of Babylon back to Athens, fighting nearly all the way fpr th.e 2,000- miles, that being the distance be- tween Cunaza, the place where he lost the battle to Athens. * Xenophoh. was not only a famous soldier, but a writer ast well, his works being extant at this date, and although a well i>osted man, yet observe how he was fooled. In his own account of the retreat he tells of camping by the side of a great wall around "a vast desert city" on the Tigris. This tremendous outer wall was twenty-five feet wide and 100 feet high, being nearly seven miles in circuit. He called it La- rissa, and that it wa^ the Medes who occupied same when qonquered and razed by the Persians. "Where- as, in truth, only 200 years before it was the Medes who destroyed the city aifter a two years' siege, and the, great error of Xenophon was the statement that the King of Persia was the conqueror, for that nation as a world power had not come into the drama of na- tions. Then contemplate that Nineveh, the most pow- erful city of the east and capital of Assyria, should loseits identity in 200 years. So it must not be taken as a foregone conclusion that QuiviKt did not contaia quite a large population because there are no visible monuments of their presence, for when you consider the lost civilization, heretofore cited, which was a myth until research by the lovers of knowledge brought to light the remarkable evidences we now have, and for the express benefit of the historians of Kansas, how much are we indebted to the Quivira Historical Soci-