I Shall Feel It As An Injustice, If,
After Having Struggled Through All The Difficulties Of The Voyage, Another
Shall
Finish the remainder almost without an effort, and yet reap the
honour of completing what I have begun." Alexander yielded
To this just
request, and about the end of the year Nearchus rejoined his fleet.
By the 6th of January, B.C. 345, he reached the island of Kataia, which
forms the boundary between Karmania and Persis. The length of the former
coast is rather more than three hundred miles: the time occupied by
Nearchus in this part of his voyage was about twelve days. He arrived at
Badis, the first station in Karmania, on the 7th of December; at Anamis on
the 10th; here he remained three days. His journey to the camp, stay there,
return, and preparations for again sailing, may have occupied fifteen days.
Three hundred miles in twelve days is at the rate of twenty-five miles a
day.
Hitherto the voyage of Nearchus has afforded no information respecting the
commerce of the ancients. The coasts along which he sailed were either
barren and thinly inhabited by a miserable and ignorant people, or if more
fertile and better cultivated, Nearchus' attention and interest were too
keenly occupied about the safety of himself and his companions, to gather
much information of a commercial nature. The remainder of his voyage,
however, affords a few notices on this subject; and to these we shall
attend.
In the island of Schitwar, on the eastern side of the Gulf of Persia,
Nearchus found the inhabitants engaged in a pearl fishery: at present
pearls are not taken on this side of the Gulf. At the Rohilla point a dead
whale attracted their attention; it is represented as fifty cubits long,
with a hide a cubit in thickness, beset with shell-fish, probably barnacles
or limpets, and sea-weeds, and attended by dolphins, larger than Nearchus
had been accustomed to see in the Mediterranean Sea. Their arrival at the
Briganza river affords Dr. Vincent an opportunity of conjecturing the
probable draught of a Grecian vessel of fifty oars. At ebb-tide, Arrian
informs us, the vessels were left dry; whereas at high tide they were able
to surmount the breakers and shoals. Modern travellers state that the
flood-tide rises in the upper part of the Gulf of Persia, nine or ten feet:
hence it may be conjectured that the largest vessel in the fleet drew from
six to eight feet water. The next day's sail brought them from the Briganza
to the river Arosis, the boundary river between Persis and Susiana, the
largest of the rivers which Nearchus had met with in the Gulf of Persia.
The province of Persis is described by Nearchus as naturally divided into
three parts. "That division which lies along the side of the Gulf is sandy,
parched, and sterile, bearing little else but palm-trees." To the north and
north-east, across the range of mountains, the country improves
considerably in soil and climate; the herbage is abundant and nutritious;
the meadows well watered; and the vine and every kind of fruit, except the
olive, flourishes.
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