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HISTORY OF THE SEA. 



the mouth of the Euphrates. Nearchus learned that Alexander 

 had already reached Susa, which was situated some forty miles 

 towards the interior upon the borders of the Tigris. He there- 

 fore ascended that river, and, at a bridge newly thrown over it 

 for the passage of Alexander's army, the junction of the long- 

 separated naval and land forces took place. Nearchus received 

 a crown of gold for his success in the expedition ; the pilot was 

 rewarded with a crown of smaller size, and the debts of the 

 army were discharged by Alexander. 



The voyage had occupied nearly five months, and the distance 

 sailed was not far from fifteen hundred miles, if the sinuosities 

 and indentations of the coast are included, and twelve hundred 

 in a straight line. Half of this period of five months must be 

 considered to have been spent upon the land, in surveys of the 

 coast, in repairs of the vessels, and in forays in search of food 

 and water. The same route is now usually traversed by mer- 

 chant vessels in the space of three weeks. Nothing can give a 

 better idea of the immense service Nearchus was thought to 

 have rendered the state, than the fact that it was in the con- 

 vivialities of a banquet in his honor, a year later, that Alexander 

 abandoned himself to the excesses which resulted in his death. 



Eudoxus, the next navigator in chronological order, was a 

 native of Cyzicus, in Mysia, and was sent by its citizens, 

 in the third century B.C., upon a mission connected with the 

 promotion of geographical science, to Alexandria, then the seat 

 of maritime enterprise. He became strongly imbued with the 

 spirit of exploration and investigation which reigned there, and 

 succeeded in inducing Ptolemy Euergetes, the reigning king, to 

 fit out a naval armament, and to send it under his command 

 upon an expedition down the Arabian Gulf or Red Sea. He 

 appears to have made a successful voyage, for he returned with 

 a cargo of aromatics and precious stones. It is supposed that 

 he sailed down the Red Sea, and, passing out by the Straits of 

 Babelmandel, followed the southern coast of Arabia as far as 



