of Tiglath-pileser I.

But when the distance between the banks was too great, and the stream
too violent to allow of this mode of procedure, boats were requisitioned
from the neighbourhood, on which men and chariots were embarked, while
the horses, attended by grooms, or attached by their bridles to the
flotilla, swam across the river.* If the troops had to pass through a
mountainous district intersected by ravines and covered by forests, and
thus impracticable on ordinary occasions for a large body of men, the
advance-guard were employed in cutting a passage through the trees
with the axe, and, if necessary, in making with the pick pathways
or rough-hewn steps similar to those met with in the Lebanon on the
Phoenician coast.**

* It was in this manner that Tiglath-pileser I. crossed the
Euphrates on his way to the attack of Carchemish.

** Tiglath-pileser I. speaks on several occasions, and not
without pride, of the roads that he had made for himself
with bronze hatchets through the forests and over the
mountains.

[Illustration: 191.jpg THE ASSYRIAN INFANTRY CROSSING THE MOUNTAINS]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a bas-relief on the bronze gates of
Balawat.

The troops advanced in narrow columns, sometimes even in single file,
along these improvised roads, always on the alert lest they should be
taken at a disadvantage by an enemy concealed in the thickets. In case
of attack, the foot-soldiers had each to think of himself, and endeavour
to give as many blows as he received; but the charioteers, encumbered
by their vehicles and the horses, found it no easy matter to extricate
themselves from the danger. Once the chariots had entered into the
forest region, the driver descended from his vehicle, and led the horses
by the head, while the warrior and his assistant were not slow to follow
his example, in order to give some relief to the animals by tugging at
the wheels. The king alone did not dismount, more out of respect for his
dignity than from indifference to the strain upon the animals; for, in
spite of careful leading, he had to submit to a rough shaking from the
inequalities of this rugged soil; sometimes he had too much of this, and
it is related of him in his annals that he had crossed the mountains on
foot like an ordinary mortal.*

* The same fact is found in the accounts of every
expedition, but more importance is attached to it as we
approach the end of the