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the most proper mode of deciding the rights of contending 

 kings*!" 



Alexander, rather delighted at the spirit than alarmed by the 

 menace of this reply, lost no time in accepting the challenge of the 

 Indian monarch. Having, therefore, placed a Macedonian garrison 

 in the castle of Taxila, and appointed Philip to be the governor of it, 

 he moved forwards towards the Hydaspes, in Sanscreet called Be- 

 dusta, and, in the modern geography of India, the Chelum ; being 

 the first of the five rivers that give name to the province. Coenus, 

 one of the generals most in his favour, had been previously com- 

 missioned to transport, on carriages, the vessels, of which the bridge 

 of boats had been composed, from the Indus to the Hydaspes ; those 

 vessels having been so contrived as easily to be taken to pieces ; the 

 smaller vessels in two parts, and those of thirty oars in three. The 

 space between Taxila and that river, a distance of one hundred and 

 twenty English miles, was passed with a celerity proportioned to the 

 impatience of the Macedonian hero to combat a prince, the con- 

 quest of whom, he conceived, would secure to him the uncontrolled 

 dominion of the Indian empire ; and, on his arrival at its banks, the 

 formidable appearance of Porus, at the head of a numerous and 

 well-disciplined army, strengthened with avast train of elephants of 

 uncommon magnitude, that lined the shore to a great extent, was 

 well calculated to justify that conception. The fact, however, is, 

 and every retrospect on either the Classical or Sanscreet History of 

 India tends to establish it, that, at this aera, a system, very much re- 

 sembling the feudal government of ancient Europe, prevailed over 

 the whole region of India; that it contained a number of petty 

 kingdoms governed by distinct sovereigns, independent of each 

 other, but, by the constitution of the government, subordinate to the 



* Curtius, lib. viii. cap, 13. 



