Chapter XXII · —Submission of the Oreitai—Description of the Gadrôsian desert
Reading edition
He then took again the half of the hypaspists and Agrianians, and the corps of cavalry and the horse-archers, and marched forward to the frontiers of the Gadrôsoi and the Oreitai, where he was informed his way would lie through a narrow defile before which the combined forces of the Oreitai and the Gadrôsoi were lying encamped, resolved to prevent his passage. They were in fact drawn up there, but when they were apprised of Alexander’s approach most of them deserted the posts they were guarding and fled from the pass. Then the leaders of the Oreitai came to him to surrender themselves and their nation. He ordered them to collect the multitude of the Oreitai, and send them away to their homes, since they were not to be subjected to any bad treatment. Over these people he placed Apollophanês as satrap. Along with him he left Leonnatos, an officer of the body-guard in Ora,[195] in command of all the Agrianians, some of the archers and cavalry, and the rest of the Grecian mercenary infantry and cavalry, and instructed him to remain in the country till the fleet sailed past its shores, to settle a colony in the city, and establish order among the Oreitai, so that they might be readier to pay respect and obedience to the satrap. He himself with the great bulk of the army (for Hêphaistiôn had now rejoined him with his detachment) advanced to the country of the Gadrôsoi[196] by a route mostly desert.
Aristoboulos says that myrrh-trees larger than the common kind grow plentifully in this desert, and that the Phoenicians who followed the army as suttlers collected the drops of myrrh which oozed out in great abundance from the trees (their stems being large and hitherto uncropped), and conveyed away the produce loaded on their beasts of burden. He says also that this desert yields an abundance of odoriferous roots of nard, which the Phoenicians likewise collected; but much of it was trodden down by the army, and the sweet perfume thus crushed out of it was from its great abundance diffused far and wide over the country.[197] Other kinds of trees are found in the desert, one in particular which had a foliage like that of the laurel, and grew in places washed by the waves of the sea. These trees when the tide ebbed were left in dry ground, but when it returned they looked as if they grew in the sea. The roots of some were always washed by the sea, since they grew in hollows from which the water never receded, and yet trees of this kind were not destroyed by the brine. Some of these trees attained here the great height of 30 cubits. They happened to be at that season in bloom, and their flower closely resembled the white violet,[198] which, however, it far surpassed in the sweetness of its perfume. Another kind of thorny stalk is mentioned, which grew on dry land, and was armed with a thorn so strong that when it got entangled in the dress of some who were riding past, it rather pulled the rider down from his horse than was itself torn away from its stalk. When hares are running past these bushes the thorns are said to fasten themselves in the fur so that the hares are caught like birds with bird-lime or fish with hooks. These thorns were, however, easily cut through with steel, and when severed the stalk yielded juice even more abundant and more acid than what flows from fig-trees in springtime.[199]