Page:Xenophon by Alexander Grant.djvu/49

Rh King. The route over these mountains would lead into the rich country of Armenia, where the Tigris might easily be forded near its source, and whence the Euxine, leading them to Greece, might be reached. This was the course which it was determined to take, albeit it was now the middle of November, and full late in the year for trying mountain-passes. Starting during the last watch of the night, they got over the intervening plain under the cover of darkness, and thus bade adieu to Tissaphernes and his Persians. All the light-armed men were placed in the front under Cheirisophus, who led them over the first summit before the Kurds had perceived their approach. Marching slowly on, they occupied some villages which lay in the recesses of the mountains, and which the inhabitants evacuated, refusing to listen to all proposals of amity. The rear under Xenophon, consisting of heavy-armed men and baggage, only got up after nightfall, and suffered slightly from an attack of the Kurds, which might have been serious if it had been made in greater force. "Thus," says Mr Ainsworth, "they accomplished their entrance into Kurdistan without opposition, and crossed one of the most defensible passes which they were destined to meet. This is the point where the lofty mountain-chain—now designated as Jebél Júdí, and the same, according to Chaldean, Syriac, and Arabian traditions, as that on which the Ark rested—comes down to the very flood of the Tigris, which it encloses in an almost impassable barrier of rock."

The Greeks quartered themselves for the night in