Sacrifices, games, and a festival ensued; and when these were ended, Alexander told Nearchus that he would expose him to no further hazard, but despatch another to carry the fleet to Susa.  “I am bound to obey you,” replied the admiral, “as my king, and I take a pleasure in my obedience; but if you, wish to gratify me in return, suffer me to retain my command, till I have completed the expedition.  I shall feel it as an injustice, if, after having struggled through all the difficulties of the voyage, another shall finish the remainder almost without an effort, and yet reap the honour of completing what I have begun.”  Alexander yielded to this just request, and about the end of the year Nearchus rejoined his fleet.

By the 6th of January, B.C. 345, he reached the island of Kataia, which forms the boundary between Karmania and Persis.  The length of the former coast is rather more than three hundred miles:  the time occupied by Nearchus in this part of his voyage was about twelve days.  He arrived at Badis, the first station in Karmania, on the 7th of December; at Anamis on the 10th; here he remained three days.  His journey to the camp, stay there, return, and preparations for again sailing, may have occupied fifteen days.  Three hundred miles in twelve days is at the rate of twenty-five miles a day.

Hitherto the voyage of Nearchus has afforded no information respecting the commerce of the ancients.  The coasts along which he sailed were either barren and thinly inhabited by a miserable and ignorant people, or if more fertile and better cultivated, Nearchus’ attention and interest were too keenly occupied about the safety of himself and his companions, to gather much information of a commercial nature.  The remainder of his voyage, however, affords a few notices on this subject; and to these we shall attend.

In the island of Schitwar, on the eastern side of the Gulf of Persia, Nearchus found the inhabitants engaged in a pearl fishery:  at present pearls are not taken on this side of the Gulf.  At the Rohilla point a dead whale attracted their attention; it is represented as fifty cubits long, with a hide a cubit in thickness, beset with shell-fish, probably barnacles or limpets, and sea-weeds, and attended by dolphins, larger than Nearchus had been accustomed to see in the Mediterranean Sea.  Their arrival at the Briganza river affords Dr. Vincent an opportunity of conjecturing the probable draught of a Grecian vessel of fifty oars.  At ebb-tide, Arrian informs us, the vessels were left dry; whereas at high tide they were able to surmount the breakers and shoals.  Modern travellers state that the flood-tide rises in the upper part of the Gulf of Persia, nine or ten feet:  hence it may be conjectured that the largest vessel in the fleet drew from six to eight feet water.  The next day’s sail brought them from the Briganza to the river Arosis, the boundary river between Persis and Susiana, the largest of the rivers which Nearchus