Hydaspes, after listening to his words, praised him, sent him to Syene, ordered his physicians to attend him, and all possible care to be taken of him. He himself soon after made his public entry into the city, with the flower of his army. The inhabitants of all ranks and ages went out in procession to meet him, strewed crowns and flowers[17] of the Nile, in his path, greeting him with songs of victory. He entered the city on an elephant, as on a triumphal chariot, and immediately turned his thoughts to holy matters and thanksgivings to the gods. He made inquiries concerning everything worthy of his curiosity, particularly about the origin of the feasts of the Nile. They shewed him a tank which served as a nilometer, like that which is at Memphis, lined with polished stone, and marked with degrees at the interval of every cubit. The water flows into it under ground, and the height to which it rises in the tank, shews the general excess, or deficiency, of the inundation, according as the degrees are covered or left bare. They shewed him dials, which, at a certain season of the year, cast no shade at noon; for, at the summer solstice, the sun is vertical at Syene, and darts its rays perpendicularly down, so that the water,[18] at the bottom of the deepest wells, is light. This, however, raised no great astonishment in Hydaspes; for the same phenomenon happens at the Ethiopian Meröe. The people of Syene loudly praised their festival and extolled the Nile, calling it Horus (the year), the fertilizer of their plains--the preserver of Upper Egypt--the father, and, in a manner, the creator of the Lower--as it brings annually new soil into it, and is from thence, possibly, called Nile,[19] by the Greeks. It points out, they said, the annual vicissitudes of time--summer by the increase, and autumn by the retiring of its waters--spring by the flowers which grow on it, and by the breeding of the crocodiles. The Nile then, is, they say, nothing else but the year, its very appellation confirming this, since the numeral letters which compose its name, amount to 365 units, the number of days which make up the year.[20] They extolled also its peculiar plants and flowers, and animals, and added a thousand other encomiums. "All these praises," said Hydaspes, "belong more to Ethiopia, than to Egypt. If you esteem this river as the father of waters, and exalt it to the rank of a deity, Ethiopia ought surely to be worshipped, which is the mother of your god?"