Curiously enough, in early times the camel was used in Persia, instead of the elephant, to carry burdens. The name of the elephant is not found in the Hebrew language; but the Grecian and Roman poets made frequent mention of it one hundred years before the time of Alexander, so that he must have known something of the strange animal when he contemplated his Indian invasion. He first met them in the flesh, according to Arrian, in the battle of Arbela, where he defeated the king of Persia, who had a few in his army, which Alexander captured. Soon after this he was presented with a number which had been brought from India by Darius, and later the victorious army of the great soldier captured a number on the banks of the Indus. It is known that Alexander was familiar with the advantages to be derived from elephants, but whether he added them immediately to his army is not known. One military writer, Polyænus, states that he did, and that a fine battalion of elephants was placed upon the left wing of the Macedonian army. But, on the other hand, Alexander said, according to Quintus Curtius, “I have so despised those animals, that, when I had them at my command, I did not employ them.” Alexander is pictured on a medal, a cut of which was published in the “Museum Cuspinianum,” edited by Laurentius Legatus, as riding in a chariot drawn by elephants when entering Babylon. When Alexander passed the Indus, he met the army of King Porus with a large force of elephants. “There,” writes Quintus Curtius, “stood those huge bulks of overgrown bodies, the elephants; which, being on purpose provoked, filled the air with a horrible noise.” The river had to be passed with boats; and the great danger to be apprehended was, that the horses of the Greeks, upon perceiving the elephants, would be seized with fear, and leap into the water. For several days the Macedonians and the Indians lay encamped on the opposite banks of the river, the one effecting to attempt the passage by stratagem, the other constantly resisting the attempt with the terror of the elephants. Porus, however, relaxing in his watchfulness, and being deceived by a division of a part of the army of Alexander, the great body of the Macedonians were safely conveyed across. But the Indian king was resolved not to yield up his dominions without a struggle. “He drew up his army in order of battle,” says Arrian, upon “a plain where the soil was not incommodious by reason of the slippery clay, but firm and sandy, and every way fit wheeling his chariots round upon. First, he placed the elephants in the front, at the distance of one hundred feet from each other, to cover the whole body of foot, and at the same time to strike a terror into Alexander’s horse; for he imagined that none, either horse or foot, would be so hardy as to endeavor to penetrate through the spaces between the elephants. The horsemen, he thought, could not, because their horses would be terrified