Page:History of Greece Vol IX.djvu/54

 32 HISTORY OF GREECE. After crossing the Euphrates, Cyrus proceeded, for nine march, 1 southward along its left bank, until he came to its affluent, the river Araxes or Chaboras, which divided Syria from Arabia. From the numerous and well-supplied villages there situated, he supplied himself with a large stock of provisions, to confront the desolate march through Arabia on which they were about to enter, following the banks of the Euphrates still further southward. It was now that he entered on what may be called the Desert, an endless breadth or succession of undulations, " like the sea," with- out any cultivation or even any tree ; nothing but wormwood and various aromatic shrubs. 2 Here too the astonished Greeks saw, for the first time, wild asses, antelopes, ostriches, bustards, some of which afforded sport, and occasionally food, to the horsemen who amused themselves by chasing them ; though the wild ass was swifter than any horse, and the ostrich altogether unapproachable. Five days' march brought them to Korsote, a town which had been abandoned by its inhabitants, probably, however, leaving banks of the Euphrates, when the river was passed by the Roman legions ani the Parthian prince Tiridates, in the reign of the Emperor Tiberius (Taci- tus, Annal. vi. 37) ; and by Lucullns still earlier (Plutarch, Lucull. c. 24). The time when Cyrus crossed the Euphrates, must probably have been about the end of July or beginning of August. Now the period of greatest height, in the waters of the Euphrates near this part of its course, is from the 21st to the 28th of May; the period when they are lowest, is about the middle of November (see Colonel Chesney's Report on the Euphrates, p. 5). Renncll erroneously states that they are lowest in August and September (Expedit, of Xenophon, p. 277). The waters would thus be at a sort of mean height, when Cyrus passed. Mr. Ains worth states that there were only twenty inches of water in the ford at Thapsakus, from October 1841 to February 1842; the steamers Nimrod and Nitocris then struck upon it (p. 72), though the steamers Eu- phrates and Tigris had passed over it without difficulty in the month of May. 1 Xenophon gives these nine days of march as covering fifty parasangs (Anab. i, 4, 19). But Koch remarks that the distance is not half so great as that from the sea to Thapsakus ; which latter Xenophon gives at sixty- five parasangs. There is here some confusion ; together with the usual dif- ficulty in assigning any given distance as the equivalent of the parasang (Koch, Zug der Zehn Tansend, p. 38). vation, to the accuracy of Xenophon's description of the country, even at the present day.
 * See the remarkable testimony of Mr. Ainsworth, from personal obser-