ninety days. Herodotus does not allow Darius even this space of time. According to his account, the march of Darius to the desert, which separates the land of the Budini and Geloni on the north from the Thyssagetae, to the bank of the Volga, the building of the castles, the return from this point to the borders of the Agathyrsi and the lake from which the Dnieper springs, did not occupy sixty days. It is in this region that the Scythians resolve to retire no farther, but to attack the Persians daily, when they begin to cook their food in a land barren of wood, and they send Scopasis from this point to the Danube. Scopasis reaches the river before the expiration of the sixty days for which Darius has bidden the Ionians wait; indeed, the Scythians of Idanthyrsus occasionally surrender flocks to the army of Darius, in order that the Persians may not think of retiring, _i.e._ in order to keep them in Scythia till the sixty days are at an end. Impossible as all these marches are, especially in the short space which Herodotus allots to them, the conduct of Darius is more impossible still. He advances beyond the Don as far as the Volga, in order to build fortresses which he does not complete; from this point he marches back again after the Scythians as far as the sources of the Dniester in order to bring on a conflict. At last they draw out for battle; Darius has attained the object he so greatly desired. Then follows the hunting of the hare by the Scythians, and Darius determines to march away rapidly in the same night to the Danube; "because the Scythians held them in contempt." He fortunately reached the bridge by taking the road on which he had come, but the Scythians assume that as the wells had been stopped up and the pastures destroyed, he could not come by that route. But how could the Persians, who when advancing had marched to the north-east to the Don, strike out the same path on their return, upon which they started on the borders of Transylvania, and the sources of the Tyras (Dniester)?