Diodorus of Sicily I, trans. C.H. Oldfather (Loeb, 1946), 406-7 (Book II, 17.5): `First of all, then, he [Stabrobates, preparing to resist Semiramis] made four thousand river boats out of reeds; for along its rivers and marshy places India produces a great abundance of reeds, so large in diameter that a man cannot easily put his arms about them ...'.