into the sea, retaining its own name and absorbing those of its tributaries. Let these remarks which I have made about India suffice for the present, and let the rest be reserved for my "Description of India."
CHAPTER VII.
Method of Bridging Rivers.
How Alexander constructed his bridge over the river Indus, is explained neither by Aristobulus nor Ptolemy, authors whom I usually follow; nor am I able to form a decided opinion whether the passage was bridged with boats, as the Hellespont was by Xerxes and the Bosporus and the Ister were by Darius,[1] or whether he made a continuous bridge over the river. To me it seems probable that the bridge was made o- boats; for the depth of the water would not have admitted of the construction of a regular bridge, nor could so enormous a work have been completed in so short a time.[2] If the passage was bridged with boats, I cannot decide whether the vessels being fastened together with ropes and moored in a row were sufficient to form the bridge, as Herodotus the Halicarnassian says the Hellespont was bridged, or whether the work was effected in the way in which the bridge upon the Ister and that upon the Celtic Rhine[3] are made by the Romans, and in the way in which they bridged the Euphrates and Tigres, as often as necessity
- ↑ See Herodotus, vii. 33-36; iv. 83, 97, 138-141. Bosporus = Oxford. The name was applied to the Straits of Constantinople, and also to those of Yenikale, the former being called the Thracian and the latter the Cimmerian Bosporus. Cf. Aeschylus {Prom., 734). Ad Bosporos duos, vel bubuB meabili transitu; unde nomen ambobus (Pliny, vi. 1).
- ↑ Diodorus (xvii. 86) says that Alexander crossed on a bridge of boats. Cf. Strabo, p. 698; Curtius, viii. 34.
- ↑ There was another river called Rhenus, a tributary of the Po, now called the Reno. It was called Rhenus Bononiensis, being near Bononia or Bologna.
