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the expedition, and in Nearchos, the chief commander of Alexander's fleet. Strabo's account of India is found in the first portion of the fifteenth book of his Geography, and I have reproduced it here with a few unimportant omissions. He opens his description as follows:

'The reader must receive this account of India with indulgence, for the country lies at a very great distance, and few persons of our nation have seen it; and those who have visited it have seen only some portions of it; the greater part of what they relate is from hearsay, and even what they saw, they observed during their passage through the country with an army, and in great haste. For this reason they do not agree in their accounts of the same things, although they write about them as if they had examined them with the greatest care and attention. Some of these writers were fellow soldiers and fellow travellers, for example, those who belonged to the army which, under the command of Alexander, conquered Asia; yet they frequently contradict each other. If, then, they differ so much respecting things which they had seen, what must we think of what they relate from hearsay?

Nor do the writers who, many ages since Alexander's time, have given an account of these countries, nor even those who at the present time make voyages thither, afford any precise information. Apollodoros, for instance, author of the "History of Parthia," when he mentions the Greeks who occasioned the revolt of Baktriane from the Syrian kings, who were the suc-