d of the army nearly completed. He
determined, before leaving the Asiatic shores, to erect a monument to
commemorate his expedition, on the spot from which he was to take his
final departure. He accordingly directed two columns of white marble
to be reared, and inscriptions to be cut upon them, giving such
particulars in respect to the expedition as it was desirable thus to
preserve. These inscriptions contained his own name in very
conspicuous characters as the leader of the enterprise; also an
enumeration of the various nations that had contributed to form his
army, with the numbers which each had furnished. There was a record of
corresponding particulars, too, in respect to the fleet. The
inscriptions were the same upon the two columns, except that upon the
one it was written in the Assyrian tongue, which was the general
language of the Persian empire, and upon the other in the Greek. Thus
the two monuments were intended, the one for the Asiatic, and the
other for the European world.

At length the day of departure arrived. The fleet set sail, and the
immense train of the army put itself in motion to cross the
bridge.[H] The fleet went on through the Bosporus to the Euxine, and
thence along the western coast of that sea till it reached the mouths
of the Danube. The ships entered the river by one of the branches
which form the delta of the stream, and ascended for two days. This
carried them above the ramifications into which the river divides
itself at its mouth, to a spot where the current was confined to a
single channel, and where the banks were firm. Here they landed, and
while one part of the force which they had brought were occupied in
organizing guards and providing defenses to protect the ground, the
remainder commenced the work of arranging the vessels of the fleet,
side by side, across the stream, to form the bridge.

[Footnote H: See Frontispiece.]

In the mean time, Darius, leading the great body of the army, advanced
from the Bosporus by land. The country which the troops thus traversed
was Thrace. They met with various adventures as they proceeded, and
saw, as the accounts of the expedition state, many strange and
marvelous phenomena. They came, for example, to the sources of a very
wonderful river, which flows west and south toward the AEgean Sea. The
name of the river was the Tearus. It came from thirty-eight springs,
all issuing from the same rock, some hot and some cold. The waters of
the strea