Thalia   

the mercenaries, and one who could give very exact intelligence
about Egypt, Amasis, anxious to recover him, ordered that he should be
pursued. He gave the matter in charge to one of the most trusty of the
eunuchs, who went in quest of the Halicarnassian in a vessel of war.
The eunuch caught him in Lycia, but did not contrive to bring him back
to Egypt, for Phanes outwitted him by making his guards drunk, and
then escaping into Persia. Now it happened that Cambyses was
meditating his attack on Egypt, and doubting how he might best pass
the desert, when Phanes arrived, and not only told him all the secrets
of Amasis, but advised him also how the desert might be crossed. He
counselled him to send an ambassador to the king of the Arabs, and ask
him for safe-conduct through the region.
Now the only entrance into Egypt is by this desert: the country
from Phoenicia to the borders of the city Cadytis belongs to the
people called the Palaestine Syrians; from Cadytis, which it appears
to me is a city almost as large as Sardis, the marts upon the coast
till you reach Jenysus are the Arabian king's; after Jenysus the
Syrians again come in, and extend to Lake Serbonis, near the place
where Mount Casius juts out into the sea. At Lake Serbonis, where
the tale goes that Typhon hid himself, Egypt begins. Now the whole
tract between Jenysus on the one side, and Lake Serbonis and Mount
Casius on the other, and this is no small space, being as much as
three days' journey, is a dry desert without a drop of water.
I shall now mention a thing of which few of those who sail to
Egypt are aware. Twice a year wine is brought into Egypt from every
part of Greece, as well as from Phoenicia, in earthen jars; and yet in
the whole country you will nowhere see, as I may say, a single jar.
What then, every one will ask, becomes of the jars? This, too, I
will clear up. The burgomaster of each town has to collect the
wine-jars within his district, and to carry them to Memphis, where
they are all filled with water by the Memphians, who then convey
them to this desert tract of Syria. And so it comes to pass that all
the jars which enter Egypt year by year, and are there put up to sale,
find their way into Syria, whither all the old jars have gone before
them.
This way of keeping the passage into Egypt fit for use by
storing water there, was begun by the Persians so soon as they
became masters of that country. As, however, at the time of which we
speak the tract had not yet been so supplied, Cambyses took the advice
of his Halicarnassian guest, and sent messengers to the Arabian to beg
a safe-conduct through the region. The Arabian granted his prayer, and
each pledged faith to the other.
The Arabs keep such pledges more religiously than almost any other
people. They plight faith with the forms following. When two men would
swear a friendship, they stand on each side of a third: he with a
sharp stone makes a cut on the inside of the hand of each near the
middle finger, and, taking a piece from their dress, dips it in the
blood of each, and moistens therewith seven stones lying in the midst,
calling the while on Bacchus and Urania. After this, the man who makes
the pledge commends the stranger (or the citizen, if citizen he be) to
all his friends, and they deem themselves bound to stand to the
engagement. They have but these two gods, to wit, Bacchus and
Urania; and they say that in their mode of cutting the hair, they
follow Bacchus. Now their practice is to cut it in a ring, away from
the temples. Bacchus they call in their language Orotal, and Urania,
Alilat.
When therefore the Arabian had pledged his faith to the messengers
of Cambyses, he straightway contrived as follows:- he filled a
number of camels' skins with water, and loading therewith all the live
camels that he possessed, drove them into the desert, and awaited
the coming of the army. This is the more likely of the two tales
that are told. The other is an improbable story, but, as it is
related, I think that I ought not to pass it by. There is a great
river in Arabia, called the Corys, which empties itself into the