84 
plikt's natural history. [Book VI. 
on the left side of the river, and the Nomadic tribes of the 
Scenitse on the right. Some writers also make mention 
of two other cities situate at long intervals, as you sail along 
the Tigris, Barbatia, and then Thumata, distant from Petra, 
they say, ten days' sail ; our merchants report that these places 
are subject to the king of Charax. The same writers also state, 
that Apamea is situate where the overflow of the Euphrates 
unites with the Tigris ; and that when the Parthians meditate 
an incursion, the inhabitants dam up the river by embankments, 
and so inundate their country. 
"We will now proceed to describe the coast after leaving 
Charax, which was first explored by order of king Epiphanes. 
We first come to the place where the mouth of the Euphrates 
formerly existed, the river Salsus,^^ and the Promontory of 
Chaldone,^^ from which spot, the sea along the coast, for an 
extent of fifty miles, bears more the aspect of a series of 
whirlpools than of ordinary sea ; the river Achenus, and then a 
desert tract for a space of one hundred miles, until we come 
to the island of Ichara ; the gulf of Capeus, on the shores of 
which dwell the Gaulopes and the Chateni, and then the gulf 
of Gerra.^^ Here we find the city of Gerra, five miles in 
circumference, with towers built of square blocks of salt. Eifty 
miles from the coast, lying in the interior, is the region of At- 
In Sitacene, mentioned in the preceding Chapter. 
^6 Or rather, as Hardouin says, the shore opposite to Charax, and on 
the western hank of the river. 
Called Core Boobian, a narrow salt-water channel, laid down for the 
first time in the East India Company's chart, and separating a large low 
island, off the mouth of the old bed of the Euphrates, from the mainland. 
The great headland on the coast of Arabia, at the entrance of the 
bay of Doat-al"Kusma from the south, opposite to Pheleche Island. 
^9 This is the line of coast extending from the great headland last men- 
tioned to the river Khadema, the ancient Achenus. 
20 So called from the city of Arabia Felix, built on its shores. Strabo 
says of this city. " The city of Gerra lies in a deep gulf, where Chaldaean 
exiles from Babylon inhabit a salt country, having houses built of salt, 
the walls of which, when they are wasted by the heat of the sun, are 
repaired by copious applications of sea-water." DAnville first identified 
this place with the modern El Khatiff. Niebuhr finds its site on the 
modern Koneit of the Arabs, called " Gran" by the Persians ; but Foster 
is of opinion that he discovered its ruins in the East India Company's 
Chart, situate where all the ancient authorities had placed it, at the end 
of the deep and narrow bay at the mouth of which are situated the islands 
of Bahrein. The gulf mentioned by Pliny is identified by Foster with 
that of Bahrein. 
