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C. PONTIO: C. Pontius Herennius, the father of C. Pontius Telesinus who defeated the Romans at the Caudine Forks during the Second Samnite war, in 321 B.C. The father is several times mentioned by Livy 9, cc. 1 and 3; cf. especially 1, § 2 C. Pontium, patre longe prudentissimo natum. NEARCHUS: mentioned by Plutarch, Cato 2, as a Pythagorean and friend of Cato.

Their stores were immediately produced, consisting of a kind of meal, or paste made of fish, in great plenty, with a small quantity of wheat and barley. This, however insufficient for his wants, Nearchus received: and abstaining from farther oppression, returned on board with his supply."

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.

Onesicritus was appointed pilot and master of Alexander's own ship; and Evagoras was secretary of the fleet. The officers, including these and Nearchus, amounted to 33; but nearly the whole of them, as well as the ships which they commanded, proceeded no farther than the mouth of the Indus. The seamen were natives of Greece, or the Grecian Islands, Phoenicians, Egyptians, Cyprians, Ionians, &c.

We cannot go farther back, with respect to the fact of the Arabians being in India, than the voyage of Nearchus; but in the journal of this navigator, we find manifest traces of Arabian navigators on the coast of Mekran, previous to his expedition: he also found proofs of their commerce on the coast of Gadrosia, and Arabic names of places a pilot to direct him, and vessels of the country in the Gulf of Persia.

Alexander now sent an old commander, Nearchus, to take charge of the ships along the coast, while he himself marched along inland, to collect provisions and dig wells for their supply; but the dreadful, bare, waterless country, covered with rocks, is so unfit for men that his troops suffered exceedingly, and hardly anyone has been there since his time.

Though Alexander declined this proposal, yet now he spent a great deal of time with workmen to invent and contrive others even more extravagant and sumptuous. As he was upon his way to Babylon, Nearchus, who had sailed back out of the ocean up the mouth of the river Euphrates, came to tell him he had met with some Chaldaean diviners, who had warned him against Alexander's going thither.

They reached a little town, of the name of which we have no record, and as they were almost without food Nearchus surprised and took possession of it, the inhabitants making but little resistance. Canasida, or Churbar as we call it, was their next resting-place, and at the present day the ruins of a town are still visible in the bay.

The provisions he obtained here, notwithstanding the consumption of them was protracted by occasionally landing and cutting off the tender shoots of the head of the wild palm-tree, were so completely exhausted in the course of a few days, that Nearchus was obliged to prevent his men from landing, under the apprehension, that though the coast was barren, their distress on board would have induced them not to return.

It seems probable that Nearchus fell in the battle of Ipsu, leaving behind him the reputation of being a very able commander; his voyage may be looked upon as an event of no small importance in the history of navigation. We must not omit to mention a most hazardous attempt made in B.C. 146, by Eudoxus of Cyzicus, a geographer living at the court of Euergetes II, to sail round Africa.