102 EXPEDITIONS BEFORE ALEXANDER. [CHAP.
and at the expiration of thirty months reached the place from
which Necho had despatched the Phoenicians to sail round
Libya. "After this voyage was completed," he adds, "Darius
conquered the Indians, and made use of the sea in those parts1."
This story, for which Herodotus is again our only authority, is
very briefly recorded, and furnishes fewer details even than that
of the circumnavigation of Africa. The intrinsic improbabilities
which it involves are no doubt much less great, because the
voyage was shorter and less uncertain, and the difficulties which
it presented were not of equal magnitude. The circumstance
also that Caryanda, the birthplace of Scylax, was in the immediate
neighbourhood of Halicarnassus, where Herodotus resided, seems
to favour its authenticity, because of the facility with which the
ob'ections writer could have obtained information on the
to its Authen- subject. But this very fact, when examined more
CI y> closely, tends to excite our suspicions, on account
of the ignorance which Herodotus displays of the geographical
features of the route which he supposes Scylax to have followed.
He speaks of the Indus as flowing towards the east; he is
unaware of the existence of the Persian Gulf2; and he describes
the Red Sea as being so narrow, that it could be crossed in its
widest part in half a day3. Mistakes such as these clearly prove
that, if an account of the expedition of Scylax ever existed,
Herodotus could not have seen it; nay, we may go further, and
affirm that Scylax, if he made the voyage, could not have returned
to Caryanda, for in that case more accurate knowledge would have
been in circulation on the subject than that which Herodotus pos-
sessed, When we add to this, that there is no subsequent trace of
any such communication having existed between Persia and India
as the historian implies when he says that Darius made use of the
sea in those parts; and also that, when Alexander sailed down
the Indus, and despatched a fleet under the command of Nearchus
to the head of the Persian Gulf, he and his companions were
wholly unaware of any previous expedition of the kind having
been made; we cannot but feel that the story rests on a very
insecure foundation,
1 Herod. 4. 44. a 0. supra, p. 8r.
1 Herod. 2. u.