upernatural power.--Strange religious
observance.--Arrival at the Danube.--Orders to destroy the
bridge.--Counsel of the Grecian general.--The bridge is
preserved.--Guard left to protect it.--Singular mode of
reckoning.--Probable reason for employing it.--Darius's determination
to return before the knots should be all untied.

In the reigns of ancient monarchs and conquerors, it often happened
that the first great transaction which called forth their energies was
the suppression of a rebellion within their dominions, and the second,
an expedition against some ferocious and half-savage nations beyond
their frontiers. Darius followed this general example. The suppression
of the Babylonian revolt established his authority throughout the
whole interior of his empire. If that vast, and populous, and wealthy
city was found unable to resist his power, no other smaller province
or capital could hope to succeed in the attempt. The whole empire of
Asia, therefore, from the capital at Susa, out to the extreme limits
and bounds to which Cyrus had extended it, yielded without any further
opposition to his sway. He felt strong in his position, and being
young and ardent in temperament, he experienced a desire to exercise
his strength. For some reason or other, he seems to have been not
quite prepared yet to grapple with the Greeks, and he concluded,
accordingly, first to test his powers in respect to foreign invasion
by a war upon the Scythians. This was an undertaking which required
some courage and resolution; for it was while making an incursion into
the country of the Scythians that Cyrus, his renowned predecessor, and
the founder of the Persian empire, had fallen.

The term Scythians seems to have been a generic designation, applied
indiscriminately to vast hordes of half-savage tribes occupying those
wild and inhospitable regions of the north, that extended along the
shores of the Black and Caspian Seas, and the banks of the Danube. The
accounts which are given by the ancient historians of the manners and
customs of these people, are very inconsistent and contradictory; as,
in fact, the accounts of the characters of savages, and of the habits
and usages of savage life, have always been in every age. It is very
little that any one cultivated observer can really know, in respect to
the phases of character, the thoughts and feelings, the sentiments,
the principles and the faith, and even the modes of life, that prevail
among u