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While he was meditating the full accomplishment of these 

 designs, and preparing to lead his harassed soldiers to new hardships, 

 the Avhole camp was filled with seditious murmurings, and re- 

 monstrated with one voice against engaging deeper in projects of so 

 hazardous and precarious an issue. Reduced in their numbers by 

 frequent and long-fought battles, covered with honourable wounds, 

 and crowned, as they imagined, with sufficient glory, they de- 

 manded to be led back into their native country, to share that repose 

 which their long services required, and to spend the remainder of 

 life in the enjoyment of the fortunes which they had so dearly 

 earned. In Porus they had already found a formidable and resolute 

 enemy ; and a report was spread generally throughout the camp, 

 that, beyond the Ganges, a river reported to be a hundred fathoms 

 deep and four miles in breadth*, the kings of the Gangarides and 

 Prasians had assembled an army of eighty thousand horse, two 

 hundred thousand foot, two thousand armed chariots, and three 

 thousand fighting elephants -if. However exaggerated this account 

 might have been, it filled the bravest among them with dismay ; 

 they supposed themselves conducting to slaughter rather than to 

 victory, and many of them loudly exclaimed, that they would not 

 submit to be sacrificed to gratify the boundless ambition of their 

 commander. 



Alexander, who was totally absorbed in his darling project of 

 reaching the Ganges, and thence pressing on to the farthest limits 

 of Asia, on hearing the rumour of these murmurings, was filled with 

 inexpressible anguish, mingled with rage and indignation, to which 

 he dared not, at this momentous crisis, give vent. He was con- 

 vinced, however, that there was no time for hesitation. With that 

 decisive vigour which always characterized the actions of this great 



* Plutarch iu Vila Alexaud. t Curtius, lib. ix. cap. 2. 



