We begin with Turkestan, by which is here meant the provinces called anciently Baktriana and Sogdiana. Their reduction, as will be seen from our Introduction (pp. 39-44), occupied the arms of Alexander for upwards of two years, from B.C. 329-327. The description of the campaigns by which this conquest was effected has hitherto proved a task of unusual difficulty, due partly to imperfect knowledge of the geography of the seat of war, and partly also to discrepancies in the accounts of these campaigns as given by Arrian and Curtius, who neither drew their facts from the same original sources nor relate them in quite the same order of sequence. It is fortunate therefore that Herr Schwarz, who for fifteen years resided in Turkestan, and had occasion or opportunity during that time to visit all its places of importance, sedulously applied himself to study the antiquities of the country, and was thus able ultimately to identify with certainty, almost all the places in which Alexander is reported, by his historians, to have shown himself. His work is accompanied by an excellent map, in which he has traced the line of the marches and the counter-marches of the Macedonian troops, while operating in the regions of the Oxus and the Jaxartes. Alexander, in the early spring of 329 B.C., left Kabulistan, and having crossed the Indian Kaukasos, arrived at Drapsaka, and from thence continued his march to Aornos and Baktra. It has never been doubted that Baktra is now Balkh, but opinions have differed with regard to the other two places. Schwarz, on sufficient grounds, identifies Drapsaka with Kunduz, and Aornos with Tash-Kurgan, near which are situated the ruins of Khulm. Alexander, marching from Baktra through a frightful desert, gained the banks of the Oxus, which he crossed with his army in five days. The passage was effected, not from Kizil, as has been hitherto supposed, but from Kilif, higher up the stream—a place which Schwarz thinks was probably the city of the Branchidai, which, with its inhabitants, Alexander so remorselessly destroyed. From the Oxus the expedition advanced by way of Karshi and Jam to Marakanda, the famous city of Samarcand. Near Karshi, at the hill Kungur-tau, occurred the skirmish in which Alexander, on this march, received a wound. Marakanda was situated on the banks of the Polytimêtos, now the Zerafshan or Kohik, which flows westward till its waters are lost in the sands of the Khorasmian Desert. Alexander marched thence to the river Tanais—the Jaxartes or Syr-darya—which formed the eastern boundary of the Persian empire, and separated it from the Skythians. On the Persian side of this river Alexander founded a city, which he called by his own name, Alexandria. It is agreed on all hands that the site of this Alexandria was at or near where Khojent now stands. In this neighbourhood Alexander captured seven towns, which had shown signs of a purpose to revolt. The names of two of these have been recorded, Gaza and Kyropolis.