ON THE GARDEN OF EDEN. 95 
raised to a great height, it overwhelms the whole region 
adjoining, unless any person turning it aside should discharge 
it through the Pallacopas into the lakes and marshes, which, 
indeed, by the entrance of this channel, even to the region 
neighbouring on Arabia, and from thence into stagnant places, 
and at length, by many and unknown windings, is carried to 
the sea. But when the snows are dissolved, especially about 
the setting of vergiliae, the Euphrates grows small, but 
nevertheless, a great part of it is drained by the Pallacopas 
into the marshes. Unless, therefore, some one should again 
block up the channel of the Pallacopas, so that the water, 
repulsed near the banks (dams), remains in the channel, it 
may so greatly drain the Euphrates into it, that thus the 
fields of Assyria cannot be irrigated by it. Wherefore, a 
governor of Babylonia, with much labour, blocked up the 
exits of the Euphrates into the Pallacopas (although they are 
not opened with much difficulty), because in those parts the 
soil is marshy and for the most part muddy, seeing that it is 
well washed by the water of the river; it may allow of the 
less easy shutting out of the water, so that they may have 
occupied more than 10,000 Assyrians three whole months at 
this work. When these things were told to Alexander, they 
incited him to meditate something to the advantage of 
Assyria. Therefore, at the point where the flow of the 
Euphrates is drained into the Pallacopas, he resolved to dam 
its mouth firmly up. When he had proceeded thirty stadia, 
the ground was observed to be rocky, of such kind that if a 
cutting were carried to the ancient channel of the Pallacopas, 
the water might be prevented from overflowing by means of 
the firmness of the soil, and that its escape might be able to 
be effected without difficulty at a stated period of the year. 
Therefore Alexander both sailed to the Pallacopas, and 
descended by it to the marshes, into the region of Arabia. 
There, having fixed on a certain convenient locality, he built 
a city, and surrounded it with walls, and conveyed to it a 
colony of Greek mercenaries, volunteers, and others, who, by 
reason of ther age or any debility, had become useless in 
war.’* 
Arrian, however, was in error when he said that the mouth 
of the Pallacopas was 800 stadia or 90 miles above Babylon, 
as the Hindia is not more than fifteen miles distant trom the 
ruins, unless he mistook another canal for it higher up, which 
started about twenty miles below Heet, the ancient Is, and 
* Arrian, De. Exp. Alex., lib. vii., c. 21. 
