Having thus cleared the strait, Xerxes directed his march along the Thracian Chersonese, to the isthmus whereby it is joined with Thrace, between the town of Kardia on his left hand and the tomb of Hellê on his right,—the eponymous heroine of the strait. After passing this isthmus, he turned westward along the coast of the gulf of Melas and the Ægean sea,—crossing the river from which that gulf derived its name, and even drinking its waters up—according to Herodotus—with the men and animals of his army. Having passed by the Æolic city of Ænus and the harbor called Stentoris, he reached the sea-coast and plain called Doriskus, covering the rich delta near the mouth of the Hebrus: a fort had been built there and garrisoned by Darius. The spacious plain called by this same name reached far along the shore to Cape Serreium, and comprised in it the towns of Salê and Zonê, possessions of the Samothracian Greeks planted on the territory once possessed by the Thracian Kikones on the mainland. Having been here joined by his fleet, which had doubled[48] the southernmost promontory of the Thracian Chersonese, he thought the situation convenient for a general review and enumeration both of his land and his naval force. [48] Herodot. vii, 58-59; Pliny, H. N. iv, 11. See some valuable remarks on the topography of Doriskus and the neighborhood of the town still called Enos, in Grisebach, Reise durch Rumelien und nach Brussa, ch. vi, vol. i, pp. 157-159 (Göttingen, 1841). He shows reason for believing that the indentation of the coast, marked on the map as the gulf of Ænos, did not exist in ancient times, any more than it exists now.