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four months. The fleet then steered back to Pattala, where he im- 

 mediately commenced the preparations for his arduous, but not 

 frantic, march through the Gedrosian deserts. 



It was, we have seen, in May of the year 327 before Christ that 

 Alexander passed the Hydaspes : towards the end of October follow- 

 ing, he embarked at Nicaea on the Indus ; he spent nine months in 

 sailing down to Pattala, where, according to the most accurate com- 

 putation of Dr. Vincent*, he arrived about the end of July or be- 

 ginning of August in the following year. By the same authority, he 

 passed a complete month in navigating the two branches of the 

 Indus below Pattala, and, early in September of the same year, he 

 set off on his return, by land, to Persia. 



Although to mark the gradual progress of policy and war, by 

 which a nation so remote, and comparatively in every respect so 

 inferior, as the Greeks, became, however short their reign, the con- 

 querors of India, it was necessary to take a very extended review of 

 the previous transactions of that nation with the Persian sovereigns, 

 the lords of Western India ; yet that conquest having been achieved 

 and the particulars largely detailed, there exists no necessity for any 

 but the most concise and summary account of subsequent Grecian 

 events till the death of the conqueror, and its consequence, the termi- 

 nation of their sovereignty . For, very bounded indeed was the au- 

 thority of his successor, Seleucus, in that region, and the compact 

 entered into by this monarch with Sandracotta (Chandragupta) put a 

 final period to the Greek dominion beyond the Sinde. But the con- 

 sideration of those matters must be left to some future historian who 

 will exert on the subject the same unwearied industry, which, under 

 a cloud of almost insurmountable difficulties, I have employed in 

 investigating the dark and intricate mazes of its most early history. 



* Vojage of Nearchus, p. 158. 



