United States or Guinea-Bissau ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The Persian empire at that time was of such vast extent, that it reached from the river Indus to the Mediterranean, and the Euphrates was looked upon as naturally dividing it into two parts, east and west. Nehemiah asks, ch. ii. 7, for letters to the governors of the western division of the empire, that they may be instructed to help him and forward him on his way.
In their eyes, indeed, the movement beyond the Afghan frontier took the shape of a Mohammedan invasion; and it was believed that countless thousands of true believers were about to pour themselves over the plains of the Punjab and Hindostan, and to wrest all the country between the Indus and the sea from the hands of the infidel usurpers.
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.
From the land of Edom, directly over the equator of the planet, we turned our faces westward, and, skirting the Mare Erytraeum, arrived above the place where the broad canal known as the Indus empties into the sea. Before us, and stretching away toward the northwest, now lay the continent of Chryse, a vast red land, oval in outline, and surrounded and crossed by innumerable canals.
The name of Caleb, Chee-shah-teau-muck, Indus, is still to be seen in the registers of those who took their degree, and there are two Latin and Greek elegies remaining, which he composed on the death of an eminent minister, bearing his signature, with the addition, Senior Sophister.
Starting with Asia, we have in the first place the statement of Pliny, that "immediately after the nation of the Prusians, in the mountains where it is said are pigmies, is found the Indus."
Having explored the course of the Indus from Attock to the sea by means of boats, and obtained, we may suppose, in this way some knowledge of the country and its inhabitants, he led or sent an expedition into the tract, which in a short time succeeded in completely reducing it.
Commerce, in the pride of her prosperity, grows nice about her roads, and she will soon take the Indus in hand, and put a stop to its little irregularities. Mere art, perhaps, could do but little to remove the impediments to the navigation of this immense river.
They drew beautiful pictures of a country blessed with peace, indus try, and love, covered with no disgusting monuments of violence and pride and luxury, without columns, triumphal arches, hospitals, prisons, or gibbets; but presenting to view bridges over torrents, wells on the arid plain, groves of fruit-trees, and houses of shelter for the traveller in desert places, attesting everywhere the sentiment of humanity.
These latter had in the mean time gone out from the Asiatic cradle of the race, and following the course of the Indus to Hindostan and Persia, had, under the name of Chaldeans, overrun Armenia, Syria, Arabia, Egypt and North Africa, which latter they found inhabited by certain negro races, whereas in Egypt they discovered red-skins or Atlantides; which latter, by the way, form also our own aborigines.
Word Of The Day