t opposition. He
was at first unable to procure any certain intelligence of the precise
position of the enemy, and after giving his army a short interval of
rest he marched for four days down the left bank of the river.

A moralist may pause upon the fact that Alexander must in this march
have passed within a few miles of the ruins of Nineveh, the great city
of the primaeval conquerors of the human race. Neither the Macedonian
King nor any of his followers knew what those vast mounds had once been.
They had already sunk into utter destruction; and it is only within the
last few years that the intellectual energy of one of our own countrymen
has rescued Nineveh from its long centuries of oblivion.

On the fourth day of Alexander's southward march, his advance guard
reported that a body of the enemy's cavalry was in sight. He instantly
formed his army in order for battle, and directing them to advance
steadily he rode forward at the head of some squadrons of cavalry and
charged the Persian horse, whom he found before him. This was a mere
reconnoitring party, and they broke and fled immediately; but the
Macedonians made some prisoners, and from them Alexander found that
Darius was posted only a few miles off, and learned the strength of the
army that he had with him. On receiving this news Alexander halted, and
gave his men repose for four days, so that they should go into action
fresh and vigorous. He also fortified his camp and deposited in it all
his military stores and all his sick and disabled soldiers, intending to
advance upon the enemy with the serviceable part of his army perfectly
unencumbered.

After this halt, he moved forward, while it was yet dark, with the
intention of reaching the enemy, and attacking them at break of day.
About half way between the camps there were some undulations of the
ground, which concealed the two armies from each other's view; but, on
Alexander arriving at their summit, he saw, by the early light, the
Persian host arrayed before him, and he probably also observed traces of
some engineering operation having been carried on along part of the
ground in front of them.

Not knowing that these marks had been caused by the Persians having
levelled the ground for the free use of their war chariots, Alexander
suspected that hidden pitfalls had been prepared with a view of
disordering the approach of his cavalry. He summoned a council of war
forthwith. Some of the officers were for attack