Journal of the Society of Arts : Volume XLIX, No. 2527 [‎693r] (11/36)

April 26, 1901.]
JOURNAL OF THE SOCIETY OF AR7S.
423
through desert country into the territory of the
Gadrosii by “a road very dangerous,” and
drawing down towards the coast. He must
then have followed the valley of the Phur to
the coast, and pushed on along the track of
the modern telegraph line till he reached the
neighbourhood of the Hingol river. We are
indebted to Aristobalus for an account of this
track in Alexander’s time. It was here that
the Phoenician followers of the army gathered
their myrrh from the tamarisk trees ; here were
the mangrove swamps ; and of the euphorbias,
which still dot the plains with their impene
trable clumps of prickly “shoots or stems, so
thick set that if a horseman should happen to
be entangled therewith he would sooner be
pulled off his horse than freed from the stem,”
as Anstobulus tells us. Here, too, v/ere found
the roots of spikenard so precious to the
greedy Phoenician followers. These same
products formed part of the coast trade in
the days when the Periplus was written, 400
years later, though there is little demand for
them now. It was somewhere near the Hingol
river that Alexander made a considerable halt
to collect food and supplies for his fleet. His
exertions and his want of success are all fully
described by Arrian, as well as the rude class
of fishing villages inhabited by Ichthyophagi,
all the latter of which might well be cut out of
the pages of Greek history and entered in a
survey report as modern narrative. After this
we have but slight indications in Arrian’s
history of Alexander’s route to Pura, the
capital of Gadrosia. Three chapters are full
of most graphic and lively descriptions of the
difficulties and horrors of that march. We
only hear that he reached Pura sixty days after
leaving the country of the Oritae, and there is
no record of the number of troops that sur
vived. Luckily, however, the log kept by the
admiral of the fleet, Nearkhos, comes into our
assistance here, and though it is still Arrian’s
history, it is Nearkhos who speaks. We must
now turn back to follow the ships. I cannot
now enter in detail into the reasons given by
General Haig in his interesting pamphlet on
the Indus delta country for selecting the Gharo
creek as the particular arm of the Indus which
was finally selected for the passage of the fleet
seaward. I can only remark that whilst the
nature of the half-formed delta of that period is
still open to conjecture, so that I see no reason
why the island of Krokala, for instance, should
not have been represented by a district which
bears a very similar name nowadays, I fully
agree that the description of the coast as given
by Nearkhos can only possibly apply to that
section of it which is embraced between the
Gharo creek and Karachi. It is only within
very recent times that the Gharo has ceased to
be an arm of the Indus. For the present, at
any rate, we cannot do better than follow so
careful an observer as General Haig in his
conclusions. There can be little doubt that
Alexander’s haven, into which the fleet put till
the monsoon should moderate, and where it
was detained for twenty days, was somewhere
near Karachi. That it was the modern
Karachi harbour seems improbable. Of all
parts of the western coast of India, that about
Karachi has probably changed its configura
tion most rapidly, and there is ample room for
conjecture as to where that haven of refuge of
2,000 years ago might actually have been.
Let us accept the fleet of river-built galleys,
manned with oars, and open to every phase of
wind and weather, as having emerged from it
about the beginning of October, and as having
reached the island of Domai, which I am
inclined to identify with Manora. Much
difficulty has been found in making the
estimate of each day’s run, as given in stadia,
tally with the actual length of coast. I think
the difficulty disappears a good deal if we
consider what means there were of making
such estimates. Short runs in the river between
known landmarks are very fairly consistent in
the Greek accounts. On the basis of such
short runs, and with a very vague idea of the
effect of wind and tide, the length of each day’s
run at sea was probably reckoned at so much
per hour. There could hardly have been any
other way of reckoning open to the Greeks.
They recognised no landmarks after leaving
Karachi. Even had they been able to use a
log line it would have told them but little.
Wind and current (for the currents on this part
of the sea mostly follow the monsoon wind)
were either against them or on their beam all
the way to the Hingol, and they encountered
more than one severe storm which must have
broken on them with the full force of a mon
soon head wind. From the point where the
fleet rounded Cape Monze and followed the
windings of the coast to the harbour of Moronto-
bara the estimates, though excessive, are fairly
consistent still; but from this point westward,
when the full force of monsoon wind and current
set against them, the estimates of distance are
very largely in excess of the truth, and continue
so till the pilot w T as shipped at Mosarna, who
guided them up the coast of Persia. Thence
forward there is much more consistency in