From Pole to Pole: A Book for Young People

by Sven Anders Hedin

Look a moment at the map. South of the Himalayas the Indian peninsula forms an inverted triangle, the apex of which juts out into the Indian Ocean like a tooth, but the northern part, at the base, is broad. Here flow the three large rivers of India, the Indus, the Ganges, and the Bramaputra. The last mentioned waters the plains of Assam at the eastern angle of the triangle. On the banks of the Ganges stands a swarm of famous large towns, some of which we shall visit when we return from Tibet. The Ganges and Bramaputra have a delta in common, through which their waters pass by innumerable arms out into the Bay of Bengal.

At the western angle of the triangle the Indus streams down to the Arabian Sea. The sources of the Indus and Bramaputra lie close to each other, up in Tibet, and the Himalayas are set like an immense jewel between the glistening silver threads of the two rivers. On the west the Indus cuts through a valley as much as 10,000 feet deep, and on the east the Bramaputra makes its way down to the lowlands through a deep-cut cleft not less wild and awesome.

The Indus has several tributaries. In foaming waterfalls and roaring rapids they rush down from the mountains to meet their lord. The largest of them is called the Sutlej, and the lowlands through which it flows are called the Punjab, a Persian word signifying "five waters." The Indus has thirteen mouths scattered along 150 miles of coast, and the whole river is 2000 miles long, or somewhat longer than the Danube.

In the month of July, 325 years before the birth of Christ, Aristotle's pupil, Alexander, King of Macedonia, floated down the Indus with a fleet of newly built ships and reached Pattala, where the arms of the delta diverge. He found the town deserted, for the inhabitants had fled inland, so he sent light troops after them to tell them that they might return in peace to their homes. A fortress was erected at the town, and several wharves on the river bank.

He turned over great schemes in his mind. Had he not at twenty years of age taken over the government of the little country of Macedonia, and subdued the people of Thrace, Illyria, and Greece? Had he not led his troops over the Hellespont, defeated the Persians, and conquered the countries of Asia Minor, Lycia, Cappadocia, and Phrygia, where with a blow of his sword he had severed the Gordian knot, a token of supremacy over Asia? At Issus, on the rectangular bay facing Cyprus, he had inflicted a crushing defeat on the great King of Persia, Darius Codomannus, who with the united forces of his kingdom had come to meet him. At Damascus he captured all the Persian war funds, and afterwards took the famous commercial towns of the Phoenicians, Tyre and Sidon. Palestine fell, and Jerusalem with the holy places. On the coast of Egypt he founded Alexandria, which now, after a lapse of 2240 years, is still a flourishing city. He marched through the Libyan desert to the oasis of Zeus Ammon, where the priests, after the old Pharaonic custom, consecrated him "Son of Ammon."

He passed eastwards into Asia, crossed the Euphrates, defeated Darius again at the Tigris, and reduced proud Babylon and Shushan, where 150 years previously King Ahasuerus, who reigned "from India even unto Ethiopia over an hundred and seven and twenty provinces," made a feast for his lords and "shewed the riches of his glorious kingdom and the honour of his excellent majesty." Then he advanced to Persepolis and set on fire the palace of the Great King to show that the old empire had passed away. Pursuing Darius through Ispahan and Hamadan, he afterwards turned aside into Bactria, the present Russian Central Asia, and marched northwards to the Syr-darya and the land of the Scythians. Thence, with an army of more than a hundred thousand men, he proceeded southwards and conquered the Punjab and subdued all the people living west of the Indus.

Now he had come to Pattala, and he thought of the victories he had gained and the countries he had annexed. He had appointed everywhere Greeks and Macedonians to rule in conjunction with the native princes and satraps.[10] The great empire must be knit together into a solid unity, and Babylon was to be its capital. Only in the west there was still an enormous gap to be conquered, the desert through which we have lately wandered on the way from Teheran through Tebbes and Seistan and Baluchistan.

In order to reduce the people living here he despatched a part of his host by a northerly route through Seistan to north Persia. He himself led forty thousand men along the coast. Twelve thousand men were to sail and row the newly-built ships along the coast of the Arabian Sea, through the Straits of Hormuz, and along the northern coast of the Persian Gulf to the mouth of the Euphrates. No Greek had ever navigated this sea before, and with the vessels of the period the enterprise was a most dangerous one, as absolutely nothing was known about the coast to be followed. But it was necessary, for Alexander wished to secure for himself the command of the sea route between the mouths of the Euphrates and Indus, so as to connect the western and eastern parts of his kingdom. It was to supply the fleet with provisions and water that he chose for himself the dangerous desert route along the coast. Of the 40,000 men who accompanied him on this march, no less than 30,000 died of thirst! The high admiral, Nearchus of Crete, performed his task with brilliant success. His voyage was one of the most remarkable ever achieved on the oceans of the globe. The chart he compiled is so exact that it may be used at the present day, though the coast has since then undergone changes in some places and has been further silted up with sand and made shallower.

Alexander would not let his fleet start on its adventurous voyage before he was himself convinced of the navigability of the Indus and had acquainted himself with the aspect of the great ocean. Accordingly he sailed down the western arm of the Indus with the swiftest vessels of the fleet—thirty-oared boats, and small triremes, or vessels whereon the 150 naked oarsmen sat on three tiers of benches above one another with oars of different lengths projecting through port-holes in the hull. The vessels were protected by troops which followed them on the bank.

In the midst of summer, when the river is at its highest level and overflows the banks for miles, it is no pleasure excursion to steer ungainly boats between banks of sand and silt without pilots. On the second day a strong southerly storm arose, and the dangerous waves in the whirlpools of the current capsized many vessels and damaged others. Alexander made for the bank to look for fishermen who might act as pilots, and under their guidance he continued his voyage. The river became wider and wider, and the fresh salt breeze from the ocean became ever more perceptible; but the wind increased, for the south-west monsoon was at its height. The grey turbid water rose in higher billows and made rowing difficult, for the oars either did not touch the water or dipped too deeply into it. It was the flood tide running up from the sea which impeded their progress, but the ebb and flow of the sea was new to them. Eventually Alexander sought the shelter of a creek, and the vessels were dragged ashore. Then came the ebb, and the water fell as though it were sucked out into the sea. The boats were left high and dry, and many of them sank deep in the mud. Astonished and bewildered, Alexander and his men could get neither forward nor backward. They had just made preparations to get the ships afloat, when the tide returned and lifted them.