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suffering experienced in a region wholly trackless and unexplored, 

 from high drifted sands, scorching heat, corroding hunger, and ardent 

 thirst, Alexander sustained the character of a great man and a 

 consummate general, being ever the first to encounter difficulties 

 and trample on danger ; in labour indefatigable, by fatigue in- 

 vincible; disdaining food while his troops were dying of hunger 

 around him, and dashing from his parched lips the helmet of prof- 

 fered water. Amidst the urgent perils of the army, he forgot not 

 those of his fleet, and, on the presumption that they were arrived on 

 the same desolate coast, made several strenuous efforts to succour 

 them, by collecting grain where it could be found, and piercing the 

 sands along the shore for water. But all his efforts proved ineffec- 

 tual : the distresses of the army were too great to allow of any of the 

 articles of life being spared for their comrades at sea ; the seals fixed 

 on the bags of corn, at best a scanty store, were burst open ; and the 

 wells, as soon as dug, emptied of all the water they contained ; 

 nor could Alexander punish a species of plunder too evidently 

 dictated by the strong command of expiring nature. After struggling 

 with famine and the pestilential winds of that burning clime during 

 sixty days, with the loss of a third part of his army and nearly all 

 the horses and camels, Alexander at length reached Pura, recognized 

 in its ancient Arabian name of Phoreg, the capital of the Gedrosii, 

 whither his fame and the terror of his arms had previously reached, 

 and obtained from the princes and chiefs, who governed in the more 

 fertile districts of that country, as abundant supplies as they could 

 procure for his exhausted forces. About this time, intelligence ar- 

 rived that Philip, whom, it has been observed, he had appointed 

 governor of all the country north of the confluence of the Acesines 

 with the Sinde, had been murdered in an insurrection of the mer- 

 cenaries left with him to defend his station; but that the native 

 Macedonians had revenged his death upon the assassins. The king, 

 Vol. in. 2 T 



