The contrast between the light-coloured and dark population of India, between the Aryas and the ancient inhabitants, did not escape Ctesias. India, he maintained, was as large as the rest of Asia, and the inhabitants of India almost as numerous as all the other nations put together. The Indians were both white and black. He had himself seen white Indians, five men and two women. The sun in India appeared ten times as large as in other lands, and the heat was suffocating. The Indus was a great river flowing through mountains and plains; in the narrowest places the water occupied a space of 40 stades, or five miles, in the broadest it reached 100 stades.[22] The river watered the land. In India it did not rain, and there were no storms there, though there were violent whirlwinds which carried everything before them.[23] On the Indus grew reeds small and great; the stoutest reeds could not be spanned by two men, and the height of the largest was equal to the mast of a ship.[24] The fruit of the palms also in India was three times as large as in Babylonia, and the sheep and goats there were equal in size to asses elsewhere, and had such enormous tails that they had to be cut off to enable them to walk. Ctesias goes on to describe the large cocks of India, with their beautiful combs, and broad tails of gold, dark-blue, and emerald; the peacocks, the many-coloured birds with red faces, dark-blue necks, and black beards, which had a human tongue, and could speak Indian, and would speak Greek if they were taught; the little apes with tails four cubits long.[25] He was the first to describe the elephant to the Greeks.[26] He had seen these animals, and had been present in Babylon when the elephants of the Persian king had torn up palm trees with their roots out of the ground. These animals could even throw down the walls of cities. In war the king of India was preceded by 100,000 elephants, and 3000 of the strongest and bravest followed him.[27]