30', thirty or forty miles above the site of Nineveh.

No resistance was made to his advance; even the passage of the great rivers was unopposed.

Arrived on the east bank of the Tigris, Alexander found himself in Assyria Proper, with the stream upon his right and the mountains of Gordyene Kurdistan at no great distance upon his left.

But the plain widened as he advanced, and became, as he drew near the position of his enemy, a vast level, nowhere less than thirty miles in breadth, between the outlying ranges of hills and the great river.

Darius, whose headquarters had been at Arbela, south of the Zab, on learning Alexander's approach, had crossed that stream and taken post on the prepared ground to the north, in the neighborhood of a small town or village called Gaugamela.