Page:Xenophon by Alexander Grant.djvu/55

Rh phrates, which they forded, the water not coming above their middle.

During the next four days they made about fifty miles over an exposed plain, from the Euphrates to a cluster of villages in the Armenian uplands, at a place now called Khanús. In these four marches they endured great sufferings. The snow was often six feet deep; there was a parching north wind which blew directly in their faces, their provisions were very scanty, and the enemy from time to time harassed their rear. Added to this, when we remember that they had only the ordinary light dress of the Greek—Greek sandals with thongs between the toes, and no stockings—we may well admire the hardihood shown by these sons of the palæstra. But several of them died, as well as slaves, and baggage-cattle in large numbers. Many got snow-blindness, others lost their toes by mortification, and many suffered from what Xenophon calls bulimia (literally ravenous hunger), which, however, does not appear to have been a distinctive disease, but only excessive faintness and inertia from long fasting in the cold. Xenophon had the greatest difficulty in bringing up the stragglers, many of whom wished to be left to their fate. One party of them discovered a hot spring, from which it was difficult to get them to move.

Cheirisophus and the vanguard of course got first to the villages, where they made themselves comfortable in the underground houses of the inhabitants, and where, according to the custom of the country, they sucked "barley-wine" through reeds out of tubs,