358 ACCOUNT GIVEN BY HERODOTUS. 



City Oasis which is inhabited by the Samians, said to be of 

 the GEschrionian tribe, and they are distant seven days 

 march from Thebes, across the sands. This country in the 

 Greek language is called the Island of the Blessed. It is 

 said then, that the army reached this country ; but afterwards 

 none except the Ammonians, and those who have heard their 

 report, are able to give any account of them ; for they neither 

 reached the Ammonians, nor returned back. But the Ammon- 

 ians make the following report: when they had advanced 

 from this oasis, towards them, across the sands, and were 

 about half way between them and the oasis, as they were taking 

 dinner, a strong and vehement south wind blew, and carrying 

 with it heaps of sand, covered them over ; and in this manner 

 they disappeared. The Ammonians say that such was the 

 fate of this army." * 



Now, if, as Count D'Escayrac de Lauture supposes, 

 the army once lost their way, they would have very 

 little chance of finding it again, for as he points out, 

 their trail would be immediately effaced by the freshly 

 drifted sand, so that it would have been impossible 

 for them to retrace their steps ; thus it seems more than 

 probable that the only memorial of this great catas- 

 trophe may have been the subsequent discovery of 

 their bones, or of the desiccated corpses, converted into 

 a species of leather by the combined action of the sun 

 and the extreme drought. It is a well-ascertained fact 

 that the conversion of animal remains into their pri- 

 mary elements of " dust to dust " according to the 

 popular formula is due to a species of fermentation 

 which, under natural conditions, will, in the case of the 

 human subject, accomplish this salutary and beneficent 

 work of nature, in about a year or eighteen months, that 

 is provided that the process of Nature is not interfered with. 



* Herodotus, Book III (Thalia) ch. 26, translated by Henry Gary, M.A., 

 1891, p. 152. 



