138 PRINCIPAL EPOCHS IN THE HISTORY OF THE 



examine the course of the Indus, from the then kingdom of 

 Kashmeer (Kaspapyrus), ( 191 ) to the mouth of the river. 

 The Greeks had carried on an active intercourse with 

 Egypt (with Naucratis and the Pelusiac arm of the Nile) 

 under Psammetichus and Amasis, ( 192 ) before the Persian 

 conquest. In these various ways many Greeks were with- 

 drawn from their native land, not only in the plantation of 

 distant colonies which we shall have occasion to refer to in 

 the sequel, but also as hired soldiers, forming the nucleus of 

 foreign armies, in Carthage, ( 193 ) Egypt, Babylon, Persia, 

 and the Bactrian country round the Oxus. 



A deeper consideration of the individual character and 

 popular temperament of the different Greek races has shewn, 

 that if a grave and exclusive reserve in respect to all beyond 

 their own boundaries prevailed amongst the Dorians, and par- 

 tially among the ^Eolians, the gayer Ionic race, on the other 

 hand, were distinguished by a vividness of life, incessantly 

 stimulated by energetic love of action, and by eager desire 

 of investigation, to expand towards the world without as well 

 as to expatiate in inward contemplation. Directed by the ob- 

 jective tendency of their mode of thought, and embellished 

 by the richest imagination in poetry and art, Ionic life, 

 when transplanted in the colonised cities to other shores, 

 scattered every where the beneficent germs of progressive 

 cultivation. 



As the Grecian landscape possesses in a high degree the 

 peculiar charm of the intimate blending of land and sea, ( 194 ) 

 so likewise was the broken configuration of the coast line, 

 which produced this blending, well fitted to invite to early 

 navigation, active commercial intercourse, and contact with 

 strangers. The dominion of the sea by the Cretans and 



