Future voyages. sufficient to satisfy the ambition of Alexander, which knew no limits short of the then known world. Whether he really contemplated the circumnavigation of Africa, and also its subjugation, is a matter of doubt, but it is a well established fact that he had in view the conquest of the whole of Arabia. With that object, he commissioned Nearchus, with the ships he had brought from the Indus, supplemented by forty-seven vessels from Phœnicia, which had been built in pieces and conveyed overland to Thapsacus, and by others constructed on the spot, of cypress, the only wood Babylon afforded, to form a fleet, and take command of this second great maritime expedition. Two of the vessels brought from Phœnicia are described as of five banks, three of four, twelve of three, while thirty were rowed with fifteen oars on a side.[1] The object of Alexander was evidently not so much conquest as colonization. To prepare the way for Nearchus, three single vessels were despatched at different times down the Arabian side of the Persian Gulf, to learn the nature of the coast, the character of the soil, and the best sites for stations or towns. One of these vessels had instructions to circumnavigate Arabia, and to proceed up the Red Sea as far as Suez,[2] though it does not appear whether she ever reached her destination.
Death of Alexander, B.C. 323. Nearchus would, no doubt, have accomplished the task allotted to him by Alexander, but when the expedition was ready to start, the Macedonian conqueror lay on his death-bed. In the midst of the fever of which he died, he, according to the diary of one of his officers, "transacted business with his officers, and
