146 THROUGH PLACES PASSED ON ALEXANDER'S ROUTE
plain a short three farsakhs, or an hour and a half, beyond our last station.^ Surkhah is conceded now to be a larger place than Lasgird and much better supplied with water and shade, while the ripe and yellow fields of grain on the outskirts looked well cultivated, and the melons grown here are cele- brated. ^ I noticed also some architectural remains that ap- peared to be old — a large vaulted structure of brick, below the level of the street, showing signs of antiquity, and the Burj^ or ' Fort,' giving likewise an impression of age. Surkhah might possibly come into consideration as a rival to Lasgird's claim for the honor of being Alexander's third halting-place, if we only had more material to prove its antiquity. ^ In any event the Macedonian troops spent only from noon till evening in whichever place it was.
For a considerable distance beyond Surkhah the road was perfectly level. Though somewhat gravelly at times, and always dusty, it was suitable for making good time, if one was in haste over these three farsakhs ; and I noted that it would be excellent for a night march. It was the same heat through which we had been traveling that made Alexander avoid a march by day, for he evidently started on his fourth stage at evening, having given his army ' a short rest ' — according to Arrian — ' and went on all night and reached at daybreak the camp from which Bagistanes had set out to meet him,' bring-
1 Surkhah is Van Mierop's ' De- 8 Possibly Surkhah is disguised in sorge' (i.e. Dah Surkhah) in Han- the Arabic form Srh^ \.q. 8ur[kh']ah way, 1. 368 = 3 ed. 1. 246. (compare the variants), in Ibn Rustah
2 Shah Nasir ad-Din's Diary (p. 47) (903 a.d.), ed. De Goeje, 7. 170, and speaks of the melons and records the in the mutilated Sirj (?read Sur- number of families at Surkhah as khlah']) in Kudamah (880 a.d.), ed. ' nearly four hundred ' in 1866. Four De Goeje, 6. 201. The latter name is years earlier (1862) Eastwick, Jour- read as ' Syrej ' by Sprenger, Post- und nal, 2. 146, put the number at ' five Beiserouten des Orients, Heft 1, p. 13, hundred ' ; he mentions the wheat and in Ahhandlungen fur die Kunde des cotton grown at Surkhah, and describes Morgenlandes, vol. 3, no. 3, Leipzig, the fortress as having walls twelve feet 1864. There is no town except Surkhah thick and as capable of garrisoning between Lasgird and Semnan.
two thousand men.
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