Bands of daring skirmishers, consisting of archers, slingers, and pikemen, cleared the way for the mass of infantry marching in columns, and for the chariots, in the midst of which the king and his household took up their station; the baggage followed, together with the prisoners and their escorts.* * Assurbanipal relates, for instance, that he put under his escort a tribe which had surrendered themselves as prisoners. If they came to a river where there was neither ford nor bridge, they were not long in effecting a passage. [Illustration: 189.jpg MAKING A BRIDGE FOR THE PASSAGE OF THE CHARIOTS] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a bas-relief on the bronze gates of Balawât. Each soldier was provided with a skin, which, having inflated it by the strength of his lungs and closed the aperture, he embraced in his arms and cast himself into the stream. Partly by floating and partly by swimming, a whole regiment could soon reach the other side. The chariots could not be carried over so easily. [Illustration: 190.jpg THE KING’S CHARIOT CROSSING A BRIDGE] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from one of the bas-reliefs on the bronze gates of Balawât. If the bed of the river was not very wide, and the current not too violent, a narrow bridge was constructed, or rather an improvised dyke of large stones and rude gabions filled with clay, over which was spread a layer of branches and earth, supplying a sufficiently broad passage for a single chariot, of which the horses were led across at walking pace.* * Flying bridges, _tîturâti_, were mentioned as far back as the time of Tiglath-pileser I. But when the distance between the banks was too great, and the stream too violent to allow of this mode of procedure, boats were requisitioned from the neighbourhood, on which men and chariots were embarked, while the horses, attended by grooms, or attached by their bridles to the flotilla, swam across the river.* If the troops had to pass through a mountainous district intersected by ravines and covered by forests, and thus impracticable on ordinary occasions for a large body of men, the advance-guard were employed in cutting a passage through the trees with the axe, and, if necessary, in making with the pick pathways or rough-hewn steps similar to those met with in the Lebanon on the Phoenician coast.** * It was in this manner that Tiglath-pileser I. crossed the Euphrates on his way to the attack of Carchemish. ** Tiglath-pileser I. speaks on several occasions, and not without pride, of the roads that he had made for himself with bronze hatchets through the forests and over the mountains. [Illustration: 191.jpg THE ASSYRIAN INFANTRY CROSSING THE MOUNTAINS] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a bas-relief on the bronze gates of Balawât.