142 ALEXANDER'S EASTERN EXPEDITION. [CHAP.
from the violence of the south-west monsoon which was then
blowing: and this was found in a harbour to which
Alcxftndr i
Portus Nearchus gave the name of the Port of Alexander.
(Karachi). ^^ ^ nQw g^^ the westernmost seaport of
British India. After the wind had abated, they continued their
course along the country of the Ichthyophagi, who occupied the
narrow tract which is interposed between the mountains of Ge-
drosia and the sea. Owing to the barrenness of this district, its
inhabitants, whose mode of life is very carefully described, were
forced to subsist almost entirely, both themselves and their cattle,
on fish, which they sometimes pounded into the form of meal,
and used for making bread1. The same thing is true of the
modern occupants of this region, and also of those who dwell in
the corresponding territory of the Hadramaut on the southern
coast of Arabia. At the entrance of the Persian Gulf Nearchus
noted the lofty promontory of Maceta, now Cape Mussendum,
which rises from the Arabian shore, while opposite to it, in Car-
mania, lay a fertile region called Harmozia, where
^e crews were allowed to repose awhile after the
hardships which they had undergone2. The name
here given attained great celebrity during the middle ages, when
Ormuz became a famous trading station, first of the Arabs, and
afterwards of the Portuguese; but at that time it was attached,
not to the district on the mainland, but to a small barren island
in its neighbourhood, called by Nearchus Organa, on which the
city was built, At the present day Ormuz is an insignificant
place, but its former greatness is familiar to us from the mention
of it in Paradise Lost, where Milton speaks of " the wealth of
Ormus and of Ind." It was here that Nearchus' sailors found a
Greek who had wandered from Alexander's army, which he re-
ported to be at no great distance, and in consequence of this
Nearchus visited his commander, as has been already mentioned.
Two additional points may be noticed in connexion with this
Pearl Fishe voyage> ^ confirming the truthfulness of the narra-
tive. One of these is the mention of a pearl fishery
as being carried on in an island in the Persian Gulf, which sea is
1 Arrian, Ind^ 29, * Jbid. 33—37.