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them to cross the river and attempt their subjugation; calling on 

 Alexander by name, and desiring 'that he would forbear to enroll the 

 Scythians among his new subjects, or consider them as of the same 

 dastardly and effeminate character with the nations inhabiting the 

 Southern Asia. 



Irritated to the last degree by these invectives, Alexander having, 

 in twenty days, by the labour of the whole army, completed the 

 Sogdian Alexandria, prepared to cross the river on the kind of floats 

 used at the Oxus. The skins, stuffed as before, with light materials, 

 being expeditiously prepared, the army once more embarked, to the 

 sound of trumpets, on those buoyant machines ; and, at the instant of 

 their embarkation, a torrent of darts and other missile weapons, 

 hurled from the engines, was poured against the foe, who, having 

 formed no conception of the jaculatory strength of those engines, 

 and seeing many of their comrades wounded by them, retired in 

 confusion and dismay to some little distance from the shore. The 

 archers and slingers, also, who advanced in the first line, so inces- 

 santly galled them with showers of stones and arrows, as greatly to 

 check the vigour of their attack upon the phalanx that came next, 

 and the other troops who brought up the rear. By this means, a 

 landing was effected without any serious loss on the part of the 

 Macedonians, and the forces, forming in close order as they arrived, 

 presented a formidable front to the retreating Scythians. Their 

 principal strength consisted in their numerous and excellent cavalry ; 

 and, unfortunately, the first division dispatched against them by 

 Alexander was so far inferior in that respect, that they were quickly 

 surrounded, and would have been cut to pieces, had not the king 

 immediately ordered the whole body of his horse, with all the 

 light-armed troops and the archers, to advance upon them. He 

 himself, at the head of one half of that body, fell on them in flank, 

 while the other half, commanded by Balaorus, attacked them in. 



