ng to eat, he went round among the
baggage and wherever he saw anything eatable he gave it out, and sent
such as were able to run to distribute it among those diseased, who, as
soon as they had eaten, rose up and continued their march. As they
proceeded, Chirisophus came, just as it grew dark, to a village, and
found, at a spring in front of the rampart, some women and girls
belonging to the place fetching water. The women asked them who they
were, and the interpreter answered, in the Persian language, that they
were people going from the king to the satrap. They replied that he was
not there, but about a parasang off.

[Footnote 28: Spelman quotes a description of the bulimia from Galen, in
which it is said to be "a disease in which the patient frequently craves
for food, loses the use of his limbs, falls down, turns pale, feels his
extremities become cold, his stomach oppressed, and his pulse feeble."
Here, however, it seems to mean little more than a faintness from long
fasting.]

However, as it was late, they went with the water-carriers within the
rampart, to the head man of the village, and here Chirisophus and as
many of the troops as could come up encamped; but of the rest, such as
were unable to get to the end of the journey spent the night on the way
without food or fire, and some of the soldiers lost their lives on that
occasion. Some of the enemy too, who had collected themselves into a
body, pursued our rear, and seized any of the baggage-cattle that were
unable to proceed, fighting with one another for the possession of them.
Such of the soldiers also as had lost their sight from the effects of
the snow, or had their toes mortified by the cold, were left behind. It
was found to be a relief to the eyes against the snow, if the soldiers
kept something black before them on the march, and to the feet, if they
kept constantly in motion, and allowed themselves no rest, and if they
took off their shoes in the night. But as to such as slept with their
shoes on, the straps worked into their feet, and the soles were frozen
about them, for when their old shoes had failed them, shoes of raw hides
had been made by the men themselves from the newly skinned oxen.

From such unavoidable sufferings some of the soldiers were left behind,
who, seeing a piece of ground of a black appearance, from the snow
having disappeared there, conjectured that it must have melted, and it
had in fact melted in the spot from the effect of