Page:Xenophon by Alexander Grant.djvu/58

48 Their next adventure was with the Taochians, a people of Georgia, who lived not in villages but in hill-forts, in which all their provisions and cattle were stored. The Greeks, after five days' march, when their stores were exhausted, came to one of these strongholds, which necessity compelled them to wish to enter. The only access to this place was guarded by the natives, who rolled down masses of rock from above. A system, however, of judicious feints made by the Greek captains caused the enemy to exhaust their ammunition, and then the Cyreians gained the ascent, which was no longer defended by the natives. But a dreadful scene ensued, for the Taochian women first threw their children over the precipice, and then leapt to destruction themselves, being followed by the men. One of the Greeks, trying to hold back a native chief dressed in a rich garment, was drawn after him, and both were dashed to pieces. This wholesale and determined suicide prevented the army taking many prisoners, but they got plenty of cattle and sheep.

From this they passed into the country of the Chalybes, another Georgian tribe. This people was famed in antiquity for traffic in the iron which they found abundantly in their mountains. They have thus given their name to the "chalybeate springs" of modern watering-places. Xenophon says that these were the bravest warriors that they had encountered in their march. They carried immense spears, twenty-two feet long, and short curved knives (like the kookaries of the Goorkhas), with which they cut off, the heads