664 
MARCH OF XENOPHON IN ARMENIA. 
plain traversed by Xenophon after crossing the Euphrates, and 
whence he took the bailiff of one of the villages to be his guide. 
It appears to me that the troops were purposely led astray by 
him the two latter days of his employment; and that he better 
deserved the chastisement he met at the impatient hands of 
Cheirisophus, than Xenophon suspected, and which therefore 
caused him to run away. Seven daily marches were next made, 
calculated at five farsangs each, ere they reached the banks of a 
river, which their leader names the Phasis. But the army 
having been left to its own guidance after the escape of the 
bailiff, and being ignorant of the country, must have wandered 
about in useless attempts to find a direct path during most of 
these days ; for any man who knew the track might have con¬ 
ducted them to the river in two marches. These vexatious and 
abortive fatigues seem to have excited the only difference which 
fell out between Xenophon and Cheirisophus ; the former at¬ 
tributing to the hasty humour of his colleague, the loss of the 
man who he hoped would have been their safe conductor to the 
end. The Phasis can be no other than the Aras ; and which is 
fordable at this season of the year in several places, from its 
source, to even as low down as Abas-abad ; therefore, unchecked 
by an enemy, as Xenophon then happened to be, a passage could 
easily be discovered. After his troops had forded, they made 
two marches, evidently over a plain, before they reached the 
great heights northward, where they found a vast array of natives 
posted to oppose them. The line of mountains which bounds 
the left shore of the Aras, I have already mentioned as a branch 
of the Mossian range. They gradually sink in consequence as 
they touch the valley of Hassan-kala, but by various ramifica¬ 
tions unite with the dangerous defiles of the Hills of Blood we 
