fully known to the Macedonians.”  The principal castes in India, the principles of the Bramins, the devotion of widows to the flames, the description of the banyan-tree, and a great variety of other particulars, sufficiently prove that the Macedonians were actuated by a thirst after knowledge, as well as a spirit of conquest; and illustrate as well as justify the observation made to Alexander by the Bramin mandarin, “You are the only man whom I ever found curious in the investigation of philosophy at the head of an army.”

When Alexander invaded India, he found commerce flourishing greatly in many parts of it, particularly in what are supposed to be the present Multan, Attock, and the Panjob.  He every where took advantage of this commerce, not by plundering and thus destroying it for the purpose of filling his coffers, but by nourishing and increasing it, and thus at once benefitting himself and the inhabitants who wore engaged in it.  By means of the commerce in which the natives of the Panjob were engaged on the Indus, Alexander procured the fleet with which he sailed down that river.  This fleet is supposed to have consisted of eight hundred vessels, only thirty of which were ships of war, the remainder being such as were usually employed in the commerce of the Indus.  Even before he reached this river, he had built vessels which he had sent down the Kophenes to Taxila.  By the completion of his campaign at the sources of the Indus, and by his march and voyage down the course of that river, he had traced and defined the eastern boundary of his conquests:  the line of his march from the Hellespont till the final defeat of Darius, and his pursuit of that monarch, had put him in possession of tolerably accurate knowledge of the northern and western boundaries; the southern provinces alone remained to be explored:  they had indeed submitted to his arms; but they were still, for all the purposes of government and commerce, unknown.

“To obtain the information necessary for the objects they had in view, he ordered Craterus, with the elephants and heavy baggage, to penetrate through the centre of the empire, while he personally undertook the more arduous task of penetrating the desert of Gadrosia, and providing for the preservation of the fleet.  A glance over the map will show that the route of the army eastward, and the double route by which it returned, intersect the whole empire by three lines, almost from the Tigris to the Indus:  Craterus joined the division under Alexander in the Karmania; and when Nearchus, after the completion of his voyage, came up the Posityris to Susa, the three routes through the different provinces, and the navigation along the coast, might be said to complete the survey of the empire.”