Sangala was the easternmost of all Alexander’s conquests. Presently his march brought him to the river Hyphasis (Sutledge), the last of the rivers in the Punjab—seemingly at a point below its confluence with the Beas. Beyond this river, broad and rapid, Alexander was informed that there lay a desert of eleven days’ march, extending to a still greater river called the Ganges; beyond which dwelt the Gandaridæ, the most powerful, warlike, and populous, of all the Indian tribes, distinguished for the number and training of their elephants.[545] The prospect of a difficult march, and of an enemy esteemed invincible, only instigated his ardor. He gave orders for the crossing. But here for the first time his army, officers as well as soldiers, manifested symptoms of uncontrollable weariness; murmuring aloud at these endless toils, and marches they knew not whither. They had already over-passed the limits where Dionysus and Herakles were said to have stopped: they were travelling into regions hitherto unvisited either by Greeks or by Persians, merely for the purpose of provoking and conquering new enemies. Of victories they were sated; of their plunder, abundant as it was, they had no enjoyment;[546] the hardships of a perpetual onward march, often excessively accelerated, had exhausted both men and horses; moreover, their advance from the Hydaspes had been accomplished in the wet season, under rains more violent and continued than they had ever before experienced.[547] Informed of the reigning discontent, Alexander assembled his officers and harangued them, endeavoring to revive in them that forward spirit and promptitude which he had hitherto found not inadequate to his own.[548] But he entirely failed. No one indeed dared openly to contradict him. Kœnus alone hazarded some words of timid dissuasion; the rest manifested a passive and sullen repugnance, even when he proclaimed that those who desired might return, with the shame of having deserted their king, while he would march forward with the volunteers only. After a suspense of two days, passed in solitary and silent mortification—he still apparently persisted in his determination, and offered the sacrifice usual previous to the passage of a river. The victims were inauspicious; he bowed to the will of the gods; and gave orders for return, to the unanimous and unbounded delight of his army.[549] [545] Curtius, ix. 2, 3; Diodor. xvii. 93; Plutarch, Alex. 62. [546] Curtius, ix. 3, 11 (speech of Kœnus). “Quoto cuique lorica est? Quis equum habet? Jube quæri, quam multos servi ipsorum persecuti sint, quid cuique supersit ex prædâ. Omnium victores, omnium inopes sumus.” [547] Aristobulus ap. Strabo. xv. p. 691-697. ὕεσθαι συνεχῶς. Arrian, v, 29, 8; Diodor. xvii. 93. χειμῶνες ἄγριοι κατεῤῥάγησαν ἐφ᾽ ἡμέρας ἑβδομήκοντα, καὶ βρονταὶ συνεχεῖς καὶ κεραυνοὶ κατέσκηπτον, etc.