We have now followed Alexander out of India into Persia. Thenceforward there are no great geographical questions to decipher, or knots to be untied. His progress was a progress of triumph, and the story of his retreat well ends with the thrilling tale of his meeting again with Nearkhos, after the latter had harboured his fleet at the mouth of the Minab River and set out on the search for Alexander, guided by a Greek who had strayed from Alexander's army. Blackened by exposure and clothed in rags, Nearkhos was unrecognized till he announced himself to the messenger sent to look for him. Even Alexander himself at first failed to recognize his admiral in the extraordinary apparition that was presented to him in his camp, and could only believe that his fleet must have perished and that Nearkhos and Arkias were sole survivors. We can imagine what followed. Those were days of ready recognition of service and no despatches, and all Persia was open to the conquerors to choose their reward. After Alexander's time many centuries elapsed before we get another clear historic view into Makran, and then what do we find? A country of great and flourishing cities, of high-roads connecting them with well-known and well-marked stages; armies passing and re-passing, and a trade which represented to those that held it the dominant commercial power in the world, flowing steadily century after century through that country which was fatal to Alexander, and which we are rather apt now to consider the fag-end of the Baluchistan wilderness. The history of Makran is bound up with the history of India from time immemorial. Not all the passes of all the frontiers of India put together have seen such traffic into the broad plains of Hindustan as for certainly three, and possibly for eight, centuries passed through the gateways of Makran. As one by one we can now lay our finger on the sites of those historic cities, and first begin faintly to measure the importance of Makran to India ere Vasco da Gama first claimed the honour of doubling the Cape and opened up the ocean highway, we can only be astonished that for four centuries more Makran remained a blank on the map of the world. FOOTNOTE: [3] _Indus Delta Country_, 1894. CHAPTER VI CHINESE EXPLORATIONS--THE GATES OF THE FAR NORTH