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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 Erythraean sea. The
Arabian king, they say, made a pipe of the skins of oxen and other
beasts, reaching from this river all the way to the desert, and so
brought the water to certain cisterns which he had dug in the desert to
receive it. It is a twelve days' journey from the river to this
desert tract. And the water, they say, was brought through three
different pipes to three separate places.
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