Three days of additional march brought them to the river Teleboas—“of no great size, but beautiful” (iv. 4, 4). There appear sufficient reasons to identify this river with the Kara-Su or Black River, which flows through the valley or plain of Mush into the Murad or Eastern Euphrates (Ainsworth, p. 172; Ritter, Erdkunde, part x. s. 37. p. 682). Though Kinneir (Journey through Asia Minor and Kurdistan, 1818, p. 484), Rennell (Illustrations of the Expedition of Cyrus, p. 207) and Bell (System of Geography, iv. p. 140) identify it with the Ak-Su or river of Mush—this, according to Ainsworth, “is only a small tributary to the Kara-Su, which is the great river of the plain and district.”
Professor Koch, whose personal researches in and around Armenia give to his opinion the highest authority, follows Mr. Ainsworth in identifying the Teleboas with the Kara-Su. He supposes, however, that the Greeks crossed the Kentritês, not near its confluence with the Tigris, but considerably higher up, near the town of Sert or Sort. From hence he supposes that they marched nearly north-east in the modern road from Sert to Bitlis, thus getting round the head or near the head of the river called Bitlis-Su, which is one of the eastern affluents to the Tigris (falling first into the Buhtan-Chai), and which Xenophon took for the Tigris itself. They then marched farther, in a line not far distant from the Lake of Van, over the saddle which separates that lake from the lofty mountain Ali-Dagh. This saddle is the water-shed which separates the affluents to the Tigris from those to the Eastern Euphrates, of which latter the Teleboas or Kara-Su is one (Koch, Zug der Zehn Tausend, p. 82-84).
After the river Teleboas, there seems no one point in the march which can be identified with anything approaching to certainty. Nor have we any means even of determining the general line of route, apart from specific places, which they followed from the river Teleboas to Trebizond.
Their first object was to reach and cross the Eastern Euphrates. They would of course cross at the nearest point where they could find a ford. But how low down its course does the river continue to be fordable, in mid-winter, with snow on the ground? Here professor Koch differs from Mr. Ainsworth and colonel Chesney. He affirms that the river would be fordable a little above its confluence with the Tscharbahur, about latitude 39° 3′. According to Mr. Ainsworth, it would not be fordable below the confluence with the river of Khanus (Khinnis). Koch’s authority, as the most recent and systematic investigator of these regions, seems preferable, especially as it puts the Greeks nearly in the road now travelled over from Mush to Erzerum, which is said to be the only pass over the mountains open throughout all the winter, passing by Khinnis and Koili; see Ritter, Erdkunde, x. p. 387. Xenophon mentions a warm spring, which the army passed by during the third or fourth day after crossing the Euphrates (Anab. iv, 5, 15). Professor Koch believes himself to have identified this warm spring—the only one, as he states (p. 90-93), south of the range of mountains called the Bingöldagh—in the district called Wardo, near the village of Bashkan.
To lay down, with any certainty, the line which the Greeks followed from the Euphrates to Trebizond, appears altogether impossible. I cannot admit the hypothesis of Mr. Ainsworth, who conducts the army across the Araxes to its northern bank, carries them up northward to the latitude of Teflis in Georgia, then brings them back again across the Harpa Chai (a northern affluent of the Araxes, which he identifies with the Harpasus mentioned by Xenophon) and the Araxes itself, to Gymnias, which he places near the site of Erzerum. Professor Koch (p. 104-108), who dissents with good reason from Mr. Ainsworth, proposes (though with hesitation and uncertainty) a line of his own which appears to me open greatly to the same objection as that of Mr. Ainsworth. It carries the Greeks too much to the northward of Erzerum, more out of their line of march from the place where they crossed the Eastern Euphrates, than can be justified by any probability. The Greeks knew well that, in order to get home they must take a westerly direction (see Anab. iii. 5, 15).
Their great and constant purpose would be to make way to the westward, as soon as they had crossed the Euphrates; and the road from that river, passing near the site of Erzerum to Trebizond, would thus coincide, in the main, with their spontaneous tendency. They had no motive to go northward of Erzerum, nor ought we to suppose it without some proof. I trace out, therefore, a line of march much less circuitous; not meaning it to be understood as the real road which the army can be proved to have taken, but simply because it seems a possible line, and because it serves as a sort of approximation to complete the reader’s idea of the entire ground travelled over by the Ten Thousand.
Koch hardly makes sufficient account of the overwhelming hardships with which the Greeks had to contend, when he states (p. 96) that if they had taken a line as straight, or nearly as straight as was practicable, they might have marched from the Euphrates to Trebizond in sixteen or twenty days, even allowing for the bad time of year. Considering that it was mid-winter, in that very high and cold country, with deep snow throughout; that they had absolutely no advantages or assistance of any kind; that their sick and disabled men, together with their arms, were to be carried by the stronger; that there were a great many women accompanying them; that they had beasts to drive along, carrying baggage and plunder,—the prophet Silanus, for example, having preserved his three thousand darics in coin from the field of Kunaxa until his return; that there was much resistance from the Chalybes and Taochi; that they had to take provisions where provisions were discoverable; that even a small stream must have impeded them, and probably driven them out of their course to find a ford,—considering the intolerable accumulation of these and other hardships, we need not wonder at any degree of slowness in their progress. It rarely happens that modern travellers go over these regions in mid-winter; but we may see what travelling is at that season, by the dreadful description which Mr. Baillie Fraser gives of his journey from Tauris to Erzerum in the month of March (Travels in Koordhistan, Letter XV). Mr. Kinneir says (Travels, p. 353)—“The winters are so severe that all communication between Baiburt and the circumjacent villages is cut off for four months in the year, in consequence of the depth of the snow.”
Now if we measure on Kiepert’s map the rectilinear distance,—the air-line—from Trebizond to the place where Koch represents the Greeks to have crossed the Eastern Euphrates,—we shall find it one hundred and seventy English miles. The number of days’ journey-marches which Xenophon mentions are fifty-four; even if we include the five days of march undertaken from Gymnias (Anab. iv. 7, 20), which, properly speaking, were directed against the enemies of the governor of Gymnias, more than for the promotion of their retreat. In each of those fifty-four days, therefore, they must have made 3.14 miles of rectilinear progress. This surely is not an unreasonably slow progress to suppose, under all the disadvantages of their situation; nor does it imply any very great actual departure from the straightest line practicable. Indeed Koch himself (in his Introduction, p. 4) suggests various embarrassments which must have occurred on the march, but which Xenophon has not distinctly stated.
The river which Xenophon calls the Harpasus seems to be probably the Tchoruk-su, as colonel Chesney and Prof. Koch suppose. At least it is difficult to assign any other river with which the Harpasus can be identified.