province of Kirman, the piedmont region of Afghanistan, and the northern border of the great desert of Dasht-i-Lut. Those who have followed the track of Alexander declare that to-day it would be utterly impossible to travel as the conqueror did with a huge army in regions where now a small caravan of twenty or thirty camels can scarcely find water and forage. To be specific, when Alexander returned from India, he divided his army of 110,000 men into two parts, one of which, including the elephants, the invalids, and the heavy baggage, was put under the command of Krateros, and followed a route through Afghanistan and Seyistan. Alexander himself, as Sykes puts it, " faced the horrors of the desert by the route along the coast of Baluchistan, in order to supply his fleet by means of his army;" although Arrian says it was because of his wish to rival the journeys of Semiramis and Cyrus along the same road to India.
The route which Alexander followed is exceedingly difficult, even for a small and quickly moving caravan ; and for an army such as that of the Greeks, which is stated to have been accompanied by women and children, the hardship must have been incredible. St. John is of the opinion that " in the early part of his march through Baluchistan, Alexander ... must have been deceived by his guides, who seem to have kept him at exactly that distance from the coast where there is least water." Farther west, in southeastern Persia, conditions were scarcely better. Sykes, the latest and best authority on the region, speaks of it as follows : " During my journey from Chahbar to Ceh, in October, 1893, which was also the time that the Greek army traversed
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