687), while Arrian, who says nothing that can lead us to think that his view was different, supplies us with a proof that Aornos was close to the Indus, for he says of the city of Embolima, which we now know to have been on the Indus, that it was situated close to Aornos. The position thus indicated is about sixty miles above Attak, where the Indus escapes into the plains from a long and narrow mountain gorge which the ancients mistook for its source. Colonel Abbott in 1854 explored this neighbourhood, and came to the conclusion that Mount Mahâban, a hill which abuts precipitously on the western bank of the Indus about eight miles west from the site of Embolima, was Aornos. His arguments in support of this identification are given in his _Gradus ad Aornon_. His description of Mount Mahâban agrees in the main with that which Arrian has given of Aornos. “The rock Aornos,” he says, “was the most remarkable feature of the country, as is the Mahâban. It was the refuge of all the neighbouring tribes. It was covered with forests. It had good soil sufficient for a thousand ploughs, and pure springs of water everywhere abounded. It was 4125 feet above the plain, and 14 miles in circuit. It was precipitous on the side of Embolima, yet not so steep but that 220 horse and the war-engines were taken to the summit. The summit was a plain where cavalry could act. It would be difficult to offer a more faithful description of the mount.” “Why the historians,” he adds, “should all call it the _rock_ Aornos, it would be difficult to say. The side on which Alexander scaled the main summit had certainly the character of a rock, but the whole description of Arrian indicates a table mountain.” Cunningham, in his _Ancient Geography of India_, advances some arguments against this identification, but they cannot be considered sufficiently cogent to warrant its rejection unless a better could be substituted. That which he proposes, however, is altogether untenable. What he suggests is that the hill-fortress of Râni-gat, situated immediately above the small village of Nogram, about sixteen miles north by west from Ohind, which he takes to be the site of Embolima, corresponds in all essential particulars, except in its elevation (under 1200 feet), with the description of Aornos as given by Arrian, Strabo, and Diodôros. Now if the elevation stated, which is some 6000 feet under what Arrian assigns to Aornos, was really the height of the rock, then the details of the operations by which it was captured are rendered partly unintelligible. Thus, why should Ptolemy, after ascending the rock to a certain distance, have kindled a fire to let Alexander, who remained at the base, know where he was? Can we not easily see with the naked eye from the foot to the top of a small hill only ten or eleven hundred feet high? Moreover, we are informed that it took Alexander from daybreak till noon to reach the position occupied by Ptolemy. Can it