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they entirely deserted the open country, and fled for protection 

 within the walls of Massaga, their principal city, of which, already 

 strongly fortified, they laboured to increase the security by addi- 

 tional works. Massaga was washed towards the east by a rapid 

 river, whose precipitous banks forbade access on that quarter. It 

 was sheltered towards the west and south by rocks of prodigious 

 height, with deep ravines at their base, and round the eastern 

 limits extended a fosse of great breadth. A wall of vast height and 

 thickness surrounded the whole. On attentively viewing the for- 

 tifications, Alexander saw its reduction would be a work of great 

 labour, and to him there seemed no more certain method of effect- 

 ing it than by wholly filling up the fosse, and planting his en- 

 gines of attack on the ground elevated artificially thereon to such 

 a height as would command the town. This minutely particular 

 account of Massaga is taken principally from Quintus Curtius*. 

 Arrian, however, records the siege and capture of this strongly-for- 

 tified city as one of the most difficult and prolonged of any in the 

 Indian expedition, and, on that account, I have paid more than 

 usual attention to the relation of this writer, ever to be suspected 

 where an opportunity for eloquent exaggeration occurs. On a nearer 

 inspection of the fortifications for this purpose, the king was wounded 

 in the leg by an arrow, shot from the wall, which put him to such 

 exquisite torture that he could not avoid exclaiming, " While I am 

 hailed as a deity and the son of Jupiter, the agony of this wound too 

 plainly demonstrates to me that I am still but a mortal !" Notwith- 

 standing that agony, however, he would not retire to his tent till he 

 had given all the necessary orders for filling up the ditch with the 

 wreck of demolished edifices that formed the suburbs, with fallen 

 trees of great magnitude and with massy stones and dirt, collected 



* Curtius, lib. vi. cap. 10. 



