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Updated: June 3, 2025
While they were upon their progress, some of the horsemen, impatient to carry the news of this happy event, set off to the camp to inform the king, that Nearchus and Archias were arrived with five or six of his people; but of the rest they had no intelligence.
Their arms were spears, not headed with iron, but hardened in the fire, nine feet long; and their number about 600. Nearchus ordered his vessels to lay their heads towards the shore, within the distance of bow-shot; for the enemy had no missile weapons but their spears.
Fortunately the details of one of the geographical and commercial expeditions undertaken by order of Alexander are still extant; we allude to the voyage of Nearchus.
It is said that Nearchus became governor of Lysia and Pamphylia, but in his leisure time he wrote an account of his travels, which has unfortunately perished, though not before Arian had made a complete analysis of it in his Historia Indica.
He is even said to have fallen a victim to his patriotism, and to have suffered bravely the extremest tortures at the hands of a tyrant Nearchus rather than betray his country. His philosophic position was a very simple one. He had nothing to add to or to vary in the doctrine of Parmenides.
In Margiana he founded another Alexandria. Alexander marches through, Affghanistan to the Punjaub. He defeats Porus. His troops refuse to march towards the Ganges, and he commences the descent of the Indus. He directs his admiral, Nearchus, to sail round from the Indus to the Persian Gulf; and leads the army back across Scinde and Beloochistan. Alexander returns to Babylon.
Nearchus returned a second time to Alexander, who rewarded him magnificently, and placed him in command of his fleet. Alexander's wish, that the whole of the Arabian coast should be explored as far as the Red Sea, was never fulfilled, as he died before the expedition was arranged.
Twelve months, within a few days, elapsed between the departure of the fleet from Nicaea, and the sailing of Nearchus from the Indus; the former having taken place, as we have already observed, on the 23d of October, in the year 327 before Christ, and the latter on the 2d of October, in the year 326 B.C. Only about nine months, however, had elapsed in the actual navigation of the Indus and its tributary streams; and even this period, which to us appears very long, was considerably extended by the operations of the army of Alexander, as well as by the slow sailing of such a large fleet as he conducted.
Nearchus again set sail. About the 8th of this month he reached the river Arabis, having coasted along among rocks and islands, the passage between which was narrow and difficult. The distance between this river and the Indus is nearly eighty miles, and the fleet had occupied almost forty days in completing the navigation of this space.
None of these vessels proceeded so far as to be of much service to Nearchus, or to carry into effect the grand object of Alexander: for his instructions to Hiero in particular were, to circumnavigate Arabia; to go up the Red Sea; and reach the Bay of Hieropolis, on the coast of Egypt.
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