INFLUENCR OF THE MACEDONIAN CAMrAIGNS. 155 



mierior of a great continent, through different routes opened 

 to inland trade and river navigation. In the short period of 

 twelve years are compressed the campaigns in Western Asia 

 and Syria, with the battles of the Granicus, and the passes of 

 Issus ; the taking of Tyre, and the easy conquest of Egypt ; 

 the Persico- Babylonian campaign, when the dominion of tlie 

 Achsemenidse was annihilated at Arbela, in the plain of Gau- 

 gamela ; the expedition to Bactria and Sogdiana, between the 

 Hindoo-Coosh and the Jaxartes (Syr) ; and, lastly, the bold 

 advance into the country of the five rivers, the Pentapotamia 

 of Western India. Alexander founded Greek colonies almost 

 every where, and diffused Greek manners and customs over 

 the vast tracts of land that extend from the Temple of Am- 

 nion in the Libyan Oasis, and from Alexandria on the West- 

 ern Delta of the Nile to Alexandria on the Jaxartes, the pres- 

 ent Khodjend in Fergana. 



The extension of the sphere of new ideas — and this is the 

 point of view from which the Macedonian expeditions and the 

 prolonged duration of the Bactrian empire must be considered 

 — was owing to the magnitude of the space made known, and 

 to the variety of climates manifested from Cyropolis on the 

 Jaxartes (in the latitude of Tiflis and Rome) to the eastern 

 delta of the Indus at Tira, under the tropic of Cancer. To 

 these we may further add the wonderful diversity in the con- 

 figuration of the country, which alternated in luxurious and 

 fruitful districts, jn arid plains and snow-crowned mountain 

 ranges ; the novelty and gigantic size of animal and \egeiable 

 forms ; the aspect and geographical distribution of races of 

 men of various color ; the actual contact with Oriental na- 

 tions in some respects so highly gifted and enjoying a civiliza- 

 tion of almost primitive antiquity, and an acquaintance with 

 their religious myths, systems of philosophy, astronomical 

 knowledge, and astrological phantasies. In no age, except- 

 ing only the epoch of the discovery and opening of tropical 

 America, eighteen centuries and a half later, has there been 

 revealed, at one time and to one race, a richer field of new 

 views of nature, or a greater mass of materials for laying the 

 foundation of a physical knowledge of the earth, and of com- 

 parative ethnological science. The vividness of the impres- 

 sion thus produced is testified by the whole literature oi' the 

 West, and is also manifested by the doubts — such as accom- 

 pany, in all cases, an appeal to the imagination in the descrip- 

 tion of natural scenery — which were excited in Greek, and 

 subsequently in Roman writers, by the narrations of Megas- 



