A Book of Discovery. M. B. Synge
those that led them, would not follow us, we slew them and, flaying off their skins, carried them to Carthage."
Then abruptly this quaint account of the only Phoenician voyage on record stops. "Further," says the commander, "we did not sail, for our food failed us."
Further knowledge of the world was now supplied by the Greeks, who were rapidly asserting themselves and settling round the coast of the Mediterranean as the Phoenicians had done before them. As in more ancient days Babylonians and Egyptians had dominated the little world, so now the power was shifting to the Greeks and Persians. The rise of Persia does not rightly belong to this story, which is not one of conquest and annexation, but of discovery, so we must content ourselves by stating the fact that Persia had become a very important country with no less than fifty-six subject States paying tribute to her, including the land of Egypt. Efforts to include Greece had failed.
In the year 401 B.C. one Artaxerxes sat on the throne of Persia, the mighty Empire which extended eastwards beyond the knowledge of Greeks or Phoenicians, even to the unknown regions of the Indus. He had reigned for many years, when Cyrus, his brother, a dashing young prince, attempted to seize the throne. Collecting a huge army, including the famous Ten Thousand Greeks, he led them by way of Phrygia, Cilicia, and along the banks of the Euphrates to within fifty miles of the gates of Babylon. The journey took nearly five months, a distance of one thousand seven hundred miles through recognised tracks. Here a battle was fought and Cyrus was slain.
It was midwinter when the Ten Thousand Greeks who had followed their leader so loyally through the plains of Asia Minor found themselves friendless and in great danger in the very heart of the enemy's country.
How Xenophon—a mere Greek volunteer, who had accompanied the army from the shores of Asia Minor—rose up and offered to lead his countrymen back to Greece is a matter of history. It would take too long to tell in detail how they marched northward through the Assyrian plains, past the neighbourhood of Nineveh, till they reached the mountain regions which were known to be inhabited by fierce fighters, unconquered even by the powerful Persians.
Up to this time their line of retreat had followed the "royal road" of merchants and caravans. Their only chance of safety lay in striking north into the mountains inhabited by this warlike tribe who had held out amid their wild and rugged country against the Persians themselves. They now opposed the Greeks with all their might, and it took seven days of continuous fighting to reach the valley which lay between them and the high tableland of Armenia. They crossed the Tigris near its source, and a little farther on they also crossed the Euphrates not far from its source, so they were informed by the Armenians. They now found themselves some five or six thousand feet above sea-level and in the midst of a bitter Armenian winter. Snow fell heavily, covering all tracks, and day after day a cold north-east wind, "whose bitter blast was torture," increased their sufferings as they ploughed their way on and on through such depths of snow as they had never seen before.
Many died of cold and hunger, many fell grievously sick, and others suffered from snow-blindness and frostbite.
But Xenophon led his army on, making his notes of the country through which they were toiling, measuring distances by the day's march, and at last one day when the soldiers were climbing a steep mountain, a cry, growing louder and more joyous every moment, rent the air—
"Thalassa! Thalassa! The sea! The sea!"
True enough, on the distant horizon, glittering in the sunlight, was a narrow silver streak of sea—the Black Sea—the goal of all their hopes. The long struggle of five months was over; they could sail home now along the shores of the Black Sea. They had reached the coast near the spot Colchis, where the Argonauts landed to win the Golden Fleece long centuries before.
In a work known as the Anabasis, Xenophon wrote the adventures of the Ten Thousand Greeks, and no geographical explorer ever recorded his travels through unknown countries more faithfully than did the Greek leader of twenty-three hundred years ago.
CHAPTER V
ALEXANDER THE GREAT EXPLORES INDIA
Still greater light was shed on the size of the world by Alexander the Great on his famous expedition to India, by which he almost doubled the area of the world known to the people of his time. It was just sixty years after Xenophon had made his way right across Asia to the shores of the Black Sea when Alexander resolved to break, if possible, the power of the Persians.
The great Persian Empire extended from the shores of the Mediterranean right away to the east, far beyond the knowledge of the Greeks. Indeed, their knowledge of the interior of Asia was very imperfect, and Alexander's expedition was rather that of an explorer than of a conqueror. How he overthrew the Persians and subdued an area as large as Europe in the space of twelve years reads like a romance rather than fact, and it is not for us to tell the story in detail. Rather let us take up the story, after Alexander has fought and conquered the Persians twice, besieged Tyre, taken the Phoenician fleet, occupied Egypt, marched across the desert and crossed the Euphrates, passed over the plain and followed the Tigris to near Nineveh, where he crossed that river too, fought another famous battle over the Persians, which decided the fate of King and Monarchy and opened to him the capitals of Babylon and Susa, wherein the immense treasures of the Persian Empire were stored. King of all Asia, he sat on the throne of the Persian kings under a golden canopy in the palace of Persepolis.
So far the whole expedition was over country known, if imperfectly, to the Greeks. Now we have to follow the conquering hero more closely as he leads us into an unknown land away to the east, known as "the farthest region of the inhabited world towards the east, beyond which lies the endless sandy desert void of inhabitants." And all the while the great land of India lay beyond, and beyond again was China, and away far over the ocean sea lay America—and they knew it not.
Alexander was a young man yet, only twenty-six. It was four years since he had left Europe, and in that short time he had done wonders. He had conquered the whole western half of the Persian Empire. Now he resolutely turned his face to the unknown east and started forth on an expedition of exploration.
Following the main highway from Media, which to-day leads from Teheran, capital of modern Persia, into the land of the Turkomans and the borders of Russia, he found himself between the great salt desert and the mountains, which to-day mark the frontier of Persia. Suddenly, to his great surprise, the Caspian Sea came into sight. It seemed about the same size as the Black Sea, and he concluded it was connected with the Sea of Azof, though the men of his day were certain enough that it was the most northern of four great gulfs connected with the outer ocean which flowed round the world.
Onwards towards the east he marched with his great army. To conciliate the tribes through which he passed, he adopted Persian dress. This annoyed his Greek countrymen, but, "as they admired his other virtues, they thought he might be suffered to please himself a little and enjoy his vanity."
Arrived at the modern boundary between Persia, Afghanistan, and Russia, he and his men pushed on across Afghanistan, by the caravan route that had long existed from the shores of the Caspian, by modern Herat, Kandahar,1 which still bears the conqueror's name, and Kabul to India. Their way lay through deep snow, deeper than they had ever seen before; and by the time they had reached the mountains of Kabul it was midwinter.
1 Kandahar = Alexandria in a modern form.
Between Alexander and India still lay the lofty range of the Hindu Koosh or Indian Caucasus. But before going south toward India, he turned northwards to explore the unknown country which lay about the river Oxus. They found the Oxus, a mighty stream, swollen with melting snows. There were no boats and no wood to build them, so Alexander pioneered his men across in "life-preservers" made out of their leather tent coverings and stuffed