From Zariaspa Alexander returned to Marakanda, passing on his route by Karakul, Bokhara, Kermineh, and Kata-Kurgan. Koinos meanwhile had difficulty in holding his own against the indomitable Spitamenes, who had collected at Bagai a body of 3000 Skythian horsemen, with a view to invade Sogdiana. Bagai is now Ustuk, a Bokharan frontier fortress, 28 miles below Charjui, but on the opposite side of the Oxus. The hostile forces at length came to an engagement. Koinos was victorious, and Spitamenes, who fled into the desert with his Skythian horsemen, fell a victim to their treachery. They cut off his head, and sent it as a peace-offering to Alexander. After the reduction of Sogdiana, Alexander withdrew to Nautaka, where he spent the winter of 328-327 B.C. This place has been generally identified with Karshi, but Schwarz takes it to be Schaar, which lies 40 miles to the south of Samarcand. Alexander left Nautaka early in spring, and his next great exploit was the capture of the famous Sogdian Rock, in the fortress of which Oxyartes had placed for safety the members of his family, including his daughter, the beautiful Roxana, whose charms so fascinated her captor, that he made her his queen, in spite of all the remonstrances of his friends. Curtius calls this stronghold the Rock of Arimazes. Some have identified it with the steep crags which line one side of the narrow gorge near Derbent, called the Iron Gate, which forms the only direct approach from West-Bokhara to Hissar. Schwarz, however, says that the Iron Gate, through which he has himself often passed, answers neither to the description of Arrian nor of Curtius, and his own identification of the Rock is with a mountain which ascends precipitously from a gorge similar to that of the Iron Gate, from which it is some five miles distant in a north-east direction. From the Rock the expedition marched eastward into the country of the Paraitakai, the mountainous district now known as Hissar. Here Alexander’s progress was arrested by another mountain fortress no less formidable than the Sogdian. It is called by Arrian the Rock of Chorienes, and by Curtius the Rock of Sysimithres. Its identification presents no difficulty, as in all Hissar there is but one place which answers the descriptions of it, namely, the narrow pass at the river Waksh, where the Suspension Bridge (Pul-i-Sangin) overspans it on the way from Hissar through Faizabad to Badshuan. This pass, Schwarz tells us, is the most remarkable place to which he came in the whole course of his travels. The fort having been surrendered through the persuasions of Oxyartes, the conqueror returned to Baktra, by way of Faizabad, Hissar, Karatag, and Yurchi, from which place he proceeded down the right bank of the Surkhan to Tormiz, and thence to the passage of the Oxus at Pata-gisar. On his return to Baktra, he there made his preparations for the invasion of India. We have here only