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minated from the vicinity of the mountain. He peopled Alex- 

 andria with about seven thousand Greeks, who were either too infirm 

 from their wounds or from age, to bear longer the fatigues of such 

 an arduous campaign, and, thus disencumbered, pressed on with 

 increased celerity into Bactria. Neither the inclement season, (for, it 

 was still the depth of winter,) nor a country entirely laid in desola- 

 tion by Bessus, to obstruct the progress of the invading army, could 

 check his impetuous career. He directed his first attack against 

 Drapsica, a considerable city in those parts, (now Bamian), which 

 he took, and where he refreshed his army after their sufferings in 

 crossing Paropamisus. He then assailed with success Aornus, a 

 rocky fortress on a mountain of great strength, and, lastly, Bactra, 

 its capita], the modern Balk. Alarmed at these rapid movements 

 of his indefatigable enemy, Bessus, at the head of a great body of 

 Bactrian and Sogdian horse, passed over the Oxus into Sogdiana ; 

 and, after burning all the vessels which he had used in the trans- 

 portation of his forces, fortified himself at Nautaca, a city of Sog- 

 diana, now called Nekshab. This large and fertile province is so 

 denominated from the beautiful valley of Sogd, one of the four 

 paradises of Asia, through the midst of which rolls the noble river 

 CAI, " which branches into a thousand clear streams, that water 

 the gardens and cultivated lands, with which the whole plain is 

 covered*." On its banks stood Maracanda, its capital, the modern 

 Samarcand, a city very celebrated in the annals of Asia and in the 

 page of her enraptured poets. But this delightful and secluded 

 region was now doomed to become the theatre of a war of dreadful 

 devastation ; not indeed between Alexander and Bessus, for the latter 

 was soon overpowered, but between that conqueror and a hardy race 

 of northern warriors, Sogdians and Scythians, reluctant to bear Ma- 



* Sir William Jones's Description of Asia, p. 23. 



