than that of his conquests, though they are unrivalled. No one else so
gained the love of the conquered, had such wide and comprehensive views
for the amelioration of the world, or rose so superior to the prejudice
of race; nor have any ten years left so lasting a trace upon the history
of the world as those of his career.

It is not, however, of his victories that we are here to speak, but of
his return march from the banks of the Indus, in BC 326, when he had
newly recovered from the severe wound which he had received under the
fig tree, within the mud wall of the city of the Malli. This expedition
was as much the expedition of a discoverer as the journey of a
conqueror: and, at the mouth of the Indus, he sent his ships to survey
the coasts of the Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf, while he himself
marched along the shore of the province, then called Gedrosia, and now
Mekhran. It was a most dismal tract. Above towered mountains of reddish-
brown bare stone, treeless and without verdure, the scanty grass
produced in the summer being burnt up long before September, the month
of his march; and all the slope below was equally desolate slopes of
gravel. The few inhabitants were called by the Greeks fish-eaters and
turtle-eaters, because there was apparently, nothing else to eat; and
their huts were built of turtle shells.

The recollections connected with the region were dismal. Semiramis and
Cyrus were each said to have lost an army there through hunger and
thirst; and these foes, the most fatal foes of the invader, began to
attack the Greek host. Nothing but the discipline and all-pervading
influence of Alexander could have borne his army through. Speed was
their sole chance; and through the burning sun, over the arid rock, he
stimulated their steps with his own high spirit of unshrinking
endurance, till he had dragged them through one of the most rapid and