The Commerce and Navigation of the Erythræan Sea: Being a Translation of the Periplus Maris Erythræi, by an Anonymous Writer, and of Arrian's Account of the Voyage of Nearkhos, from the Mouth of the Indus to the Head of the Persian Gulf
History
The Commerce and Navigation of the Erythræan Sea: Being a Translation of the Periplus Maris Erythræi, by an Anonymous Writer, and of Arrian's Account of the Voyage of Nearkhos, from the Mouth of the Indus to the Head of the Persian Gulf
Classical geography; Geography, Ancient; India -- Description and travel -- Early works to 1800; Indian Ocean Region -- Commerce -- History
expedition, for all accounts represent this cape and the parts adjacent
as an arid waste where water cannot possibly be procured.
XXXIII. On resuming the voyage they sailed close to land, and after
making about 700 stadia anchored on another shore called Neoptana.[84]
From this they weighed next day at dawn, and after a course of 100
stadia anchored at the mouth of the river Anamis[85] in a country
called Harmozeia.[86] Here at last they found a hospitable region,
one which was rich in every production except only the olive. Here
accordingly they landed, and enjoyed a welcome respite from their
many toils—heightening their pleasure by calling to remembrance what
miseries they had suffered at sea and in the Ikhthyophagi country,
where the shores were so sterile, and the natives so brute-like, and
where they had been reduced to the last extremities of want. Here,
also, some of them in scattered parties, leaving the encampment on
the shore, wandered inland searching for one thing and another that
might supply their several requirements. While thus engaged, they fell
in with a man who wore a Greek mantle, and was otherwise attired as
a Greek and spoke the Greek language. Those who first discovered him
declared that tears started to their eyes, so strange did it appear,
after all they had suffered, to see once more a countryman of their
own, and to hear the accents of their native tongue. They asked him
whence he came, and who he was. He replied that he had straggled from
the army of Alexander, and that the army led by Alexander in person
was not far off. On hearing this they hurry the man with shouts of
tumultuous joy to the presence of Nearkhos, to whom he repeated all
that he had already said, assuring him that the army and the king were
not more than a 5 days’ march distant from the sea. The Governor of
the province, he added, was on the spot, and he would present him to
Nearkhos, and he presented him accordingly. Nearkhos consulted this
person regarding the route he should take in order to reach the king,
and then they all went off, and made their way to the ships. Early
next morning the ships by orders of Nearkhos were drawn on shore,
partly for repair of the damages which some of them had suffered on the
voyage, and partly because he had resolved to leave here the greater
part of his army. Having this in view, he fortified the roadstead with
a double palisade, and also with an earthen rampart and a deep ditch
extending from the banks of the river to the dockyard where the ships
were lying.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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