Note 499 — Chapter XCIV · MILITARY OPERATIONS AND CONQUESTS OF ALEXANDER, AFTER HIS WINTER-QUARTERS IN PERSIS, DOWN TO HIS DEATH AT BABYLON.

Arrian, iv. 16, 4; Curtius, vii. 10, 1. “Sogdiana regio magnâ ex parte deserta est; octingenta ferè stadia in latitudinem vastæ solitudines tenent.”

Respecting the same country (Sogdiana and Baktria), Mr. Erskine observes (Introduction to the Memoirs of Sultan Baber, p. xliii.):—“The face of the country is extremely broken, and divided by lofty hills; even the plains are diversified by great varieties of soil,—some extensive districts along the Kohik river, nearly the whole of Ferghana (along the Jaxartes), the greater part of Kwarizm along the branches of the Oxus, with the large portions of Balkh, Badakshan, Kesh, and Hissar, being of uncommon fertility; while the greater part of the rest is a barren waste, and in some places a sandy desert. Indeed the whole country north of the Oxus has a decided tendency to degenerate into desert, and many of its most fruitful spaces are nearly surrounded by barren sands; so that the population of all these districts still, as in the time of Baber, consists of the fixed inhabitants of the cities and fertile lands, and of the unsettled and roving wanderers of the desert, who dwell in tents of felt, and live on the produce of their flocks.”