in Reply to Mr. Beke. 195 



Then as to the navigation of Alexander and his fleet in the 

 delta streams. Arrian thus gives it*: Alexander, having 

 joined his fleet at Susiana, " sailed down the river Etileus 

 towards the sea ; and now when near its outlet to the ocean, 

 he left the worst and greater part of his ships, and with the 

 swiftest sailed down the Euleus to the ocean and to the mouths 

 of the Tigris, the other ships on the Euleus entering a canal 

 cut from the Tigris to that river." He thus made a circuit to 

 meet them. And all this might be done at the present time. 

 The ancient canal, the entire circuit, all the points of the na- 

 vigation then presented by the spot, are still offered for our 

 observation. The Euleus, coming from the north-east in a 

 line perpendicular to that of the Tigris, actually marks o^'and 

 fixes the extent of the delta of that period. Or are we, for 

 the purposes of this theory, to suppose some other river? 

 flowing too through Susiana, which lies in part at the end 

 of a line from the lower Euphrates f, carrying its waters to 

 a delta 200 or 300 miles to the north-west, and another canal 

 cut across from it to some high quarter of the Tigris, adapt- 

 ing itself to the occasion ? But that is impossible ; the theory 

 throws an expanse of gulf in its way, into which any river 

 from Susiana which could be substituted must have fallen, re- 

 mote from the Tigris. 



On my " much straining and qualifying many ancient au- 

 thorities," I do not think it necessary to enter, especially as 

 they ail harmonize with the unbroken sense of the passage in 

 Pliny, in part quoted by Mr. Beke, and to which I shall pre- 

 sently refer. My observation, distinctly applied to Pliny's 

 general account of the two rivers only, that gentleman at once 

 transfers to all the authorities adduced, and then adds, " on 

 his own admission they are not always very explicable J." 



But the main point on which Mr. Beke now rests his ar- 

 gument is the measurement of distances given by Pliny. The 

 quotation from that author which seemed the most to favour 



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 vi rsTftYiToit eK rov Tfy(>YiTQg eg rou Ev^xiov. — Arrian, Exp. Alex., 1. vii. c. 7. 



t See Col. Chesney's Map in Report. 



\ A few miles of addition to the delta has manifestly never been the 

 question. I much object to such expressions in the reply as, "Mr. Carter has, 

 in fact, asserted the opinion, that since the time of Nearchus, the encroach- 

 ments on the gulf must be very unimportant," omitting the words " to the 

 point in question, any later encroachments," &c, as conveying the idea of 

 a mere assertion without proof, and a much broader one than my remarks 

 warrant. 



2C2 



