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Of his narrative pieces the most remarkable is his Revolt of the Tartars, describing the flight of a Kalmuck tribe of six hundred thousand souls from Russia to the Chinese frontier: a great hegira or anabasis, which extended for four thousand miles over desert steppes infested with foes, occupied six months' time, and left nearly half of the tribe dead upon the way.
Of grammar, until some years later, I learnt no more than the inflections of the nouns and verbs, but, after a course of vocables, proceeded at once to translation; and I faintly remember going through Aesop's Fables, the first Greek book which I read. The Anabasis, which I remember better, was the second. I learnt no Latin until my eighth year.
People who eat too much, drink too much, smoke too much, and do not exercise enough, have to pay for their privileges, even though they are able to work differential calculus with one hand and recite Xenophon's "Anabasis" backward.
He is said to have lived to more than 90 years of age, and he mentions an event which occurred as late as 357 B.C. Probably all the works of Xenophon are still extant. The ANABASIS is the work on which his fame as an historian chiefly rests. It is written in a simple and agreeable style, and conveys much curious and striking information.
Xenophon, whose acquaintance, by means of the Anabasis, he was just making; or perhaps he was thinking of no more serious a subject than football and the intricate art of punting. But, whatever his thoughts may have been, they were doomed to speedy interruption, as will be seen.
He had put his hand to the plow, and he was not one to turn back or loiter on the way. That term he began Xenophon's Anabasis, and was fortunate enough to find a home in the president's family. But he was not content with working in term-time. When the summer brought a vacation, he felt that it was too long a time to be lost.
This young man had read the Anabasis, and had some general idea what the word meant; but he had no accurate knowledge how the word came to have its meaning, or of the history and geography implied in it. This being the case, it was useless, or rather hurtful, for a boy like him to amuse himself with running through Grote’s many volumes, or to cast his eye over Matthiæ’s minute criticisms.
When the plains were passed, and the mountains reached, there arose the new difficulties of forcing passes, of repelling wild mountaineers from positions commanding the road, of providing food, and avoiding false routes. The narrative of the surmounting of all these obstacles with tact and temper is the main subject of the famous "Anabasis."
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