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surrounded with the waters of the inundated Panjab ; which must 

 have been the case, since Alexander entered India in the spring*, 

 when the rainy season had already begun in the mountains, and 

 crossed the Hydaspes at the summer solstice, when it was at its 

 height. Who ever, before Macedonia's Madman, as our great poet, 

 ignorant of the vast designs he had formed, unwarrantably calls 

 him, embarked so large an army on board a fleet hastily construct- 

 ed ; and, though every thing was at stake, in the ardent pursuit of 

 those designs, dared the unknown perils of a rapid and dangerous 

 river ; exposed the greatest part of them to instant destruction, by 

 coasting the Indian Ocean in the face of the monsoon ; and success- 

 fully braved the accumulated horrors of the Gedrosian deserts? 

 But I must not farther anticipate a subject upon which it will be 

 my duty presently to expatiate more at large, and have merely 

 premised thus much by way of apology for commencing, at so 

 early a period of the life of Alexander, a history with which that of 

 India has no intimate connection, till the battle of Arbela had de- 

 cided the fate of the Persian empire. Still, however, the subject is 

 not wholly irrelative ; still it is the history of the Sovereign, by 

 conquest, of Western Hindostan. Minute details are out of the 

 question ; a general sketch of occurrences, previous to that event, 

 will be found of use to illustrate those that follow it. We shall be 

 taught, by the survey, no longer to impute to motives of vanity 

 and fruitless curiosity the perilous voyage down the Indus ; the 

 necessary, but arduous, subjection of the predatory nations who 

 inhabited the banks of that river to a wild spirit of making conquests 

 and a boundless thirst of plunder ; nor consider the circuitous march 

 along the desolate coast and burning sands of Carmania, to Baby- 



* Arrian, lib. iv. cap. 21. 



