Another disaster also befell the army which seriously affected the men themselves as well as the horses and the beasts of burden. For the country of the Gadrôsians, like that of the Indians, is supplied with rains by the Etesian winds; but these rains do not fall on the Gadrôsian plains, but on the mountains to which the clouds are carried by the wind, where they dissolve in rain without passing over the crests of the mountains. When the army on one occasion lay encamped for the night near a small winter torrent for the sake of its water, the torrent which passes that way about the second watch of the night became swollen by rains which had fallen unperceived by the army, and came rushing down with so great a deluge that it destroyed most of the women and children of the camp-followers, and swept away all the royal baggage and whatever beasts of burden were still left. The soldiers themselves, after a hard struggle, barely escaped with their lives, and a portion only of their weapons. Many of them besides came by their death through drinking, for if when jaded by the broiling heat and thirst they fell in with abundance of water, they quaffed it with insatiable avidity till they killed themselves. For this reason Alexander generally pitched his camp not in the immediate vicinity of the watering-places, but some twenty stadia off to prevent the men and beasts from rushing in crowds into the water to the danger of their lives, as well as to prohibit those who had no self-control from polluting the water for the rest of the troops by their stepping into the springs or streams. _Chapter XXVI.—Incidents of the march through Gadrôsia_