Alexander's military tour. 85 



meadow grass reminded the soldiers of their home. 

 Turning again towards the north he climbed over the 

 lofty back of the Hindoo Koosh where the people are 

 kept inside their houses half the year by snow, and 

 descended into the province of Bactria, a land of low 

 waving hills, destitute of trees, and covered only with 

 a dry kind of grass. But as he passed on, crossing 

 the muddy waters of the Oxus, he arrived at the oases 

 of Bokhara and Samarcand, regions of garden-land with 

 smiling orchards of fruit trees and poplars rustling their 

 silvery leaves. Finally he reached the banks of the 

 Jaxartes the frontier of the Persian Empire. Beyond 

 that river was an ocean of salt and sandy plains in- 

 habitated by wild Tartar or Turkish tribes who boasted 

 that they neither reposed beneath the shade of a tree 

 nor of a king, who lived by rapine like beasts of prey, 

 and whose wives rode forth to attack a passing caravan 

 if their husbands happened to be robbing elsewhere — 

 a practice which gave rise to the romantic stories 

 of the Amazons. These people came down to the 

 banks of the river near Khojend and challenged 

 Alexander to come across and have a fight. He 

 inflated the soldiers' tents, which were made of skins, 

 formed them into rafts, paddled across and gave the 

 Tartars as much as they desired. He returned to 

 Afghanistan and marched through the western passes 

 into the open plains of the Punjaub where, perhaps, at 

 some future day, hordes of drilled Mongols and Hindoo 

 sepoys will fight under Russian and English officers 

 for the empire of the Asiatic world. He built a fleet 

 on the Indus, sailed down it to its mouth, despatched 

 his general Nearchus to the Persian Gulf by sea, 

 while he himself marched back through the terrific 

 deserts which separate Persia from the Indus. 



