consequently increase of expense, but was exposed to risks which in the modern and more perfect state of navigation are avoided. In the course of those voyages, the persons who conducted the vessels must have noticed the regular direction and shiftings of the Monsoons. Whether from a resolution taken in consequence of such observation, or whether by accident, as is alleged, it was not until the reign of Claudius, that is, sometime between the year of Christ forty-one and fifty-four, or full 370 years after the voyage of Nearchus, that the tedious mode of keeping near the shores was abandoned. Pliny informs us that Hippalus, a freed man of Annius Plocamus, being sent by him in a vessel to collect the customs of the Red Sea, which Plocamus farmed from the Emperor, was driven by a strong wind into the Erythrean*

*The Erythrean appears to us to have been the sea extending along the coast, from the gulf of Arabia to the gulf of Persia. According to fabulous story, the name was given to it in commemoration of the death of

sea and Indian ocean, and arrived after a short voyage at a place which he names Hipparus, on the island of Taprobane, or Ceylon,* or, according to other authors at Musiris, on the coast of Malabar; the latter account appears to us the most reasonable. In consequence of this discovery, instead of coasting, when going to or coming from India, the more expeditious method of sailing in a direct course was adopted. After that epoch we find traders frequenting various places on the coast of Malabar; one of these was named by the Greeks, Zizerus, the

Erythras, son of Perseus and Andromeda, who was accidentally drowned there.

* This island is named by Cosmas, the monk, Sielidiba, which approaches very nearly to Serendib, the name by which it is known over all the east. Cosmas, during the reign of Justinian, after different voyages to India, retired into a monastery, where he composed several works. Although his topography is full of extravagant hypotheses, and he seems absurdly credulous, like the ancient Greek authors, and the modern Tavernier, he relates what he really himself saw, with truth and simplicity. See Collection des Ecrivains Grecs, par le Père Montfaucon.

position of which has not yet been ascertained; another was Murcis, supposed to be Calicut, and finally they can be traced round Cape Comorin, purchasing pearls from the fishery at Tuticorin in the Gulf of Manar, and proceeding to and mounting the Ganges. From Berenice, ships sailed for India in the months of June and July, and began their voyage homewards in December.

Besides the productions of the great peninsula of India, some of those of China, the spice islands, and the Golden Chersonesus,* were also brought to Egypt; but as the traders from thence had no direct

* To fix this Chersonesus, has excited much learned inquiry; but that it meant the coasts of Ava, Pegu, and Malacca, perhaps Siam also, is the opinion that now most generally prevails.

It appears that the Hindus carried on maritime commerce at a very remote period. We have already mentioned a law of Menu respecting money lent on bottomry. (See vol. i. p. 35.) But besides what may have been brought to India from China by sea, it appears that the productions of that country were also brought by land through Thibet to the banks of the Ganges.

intercourse with those last mentioned countries themselves, Dr. Robertson supposes this to have been one of the reasons why silks continued to bear such iminense prices at Rome, even in the time of Aurelian,* above two hundred years after it was first introduced there. This observation is founded on a belief entertained by the learned author, that silk, at that time, was produced in China only; and that the price of what was brought to Rome, was enhanced by the charges of such circuitous course, and by the profits of the different merchants through whom it was procured. But the opinion that the silk-worm was peculiar to China, is unquestionably erroneous. In the laws of Menu two classes of persons are mentioned as specially appropriated to the care of the silk-worm and the spinning of silk; they had names expressive of their occupations, and they yet continue to follow them from father to

* Aurelian was elected Emperor in the year of Christ

son in the same manner as is observed by the Hindus in all other avocations. In the ancient Sanscrit language there are names for the silk-worm and silk. On the first acquaintance of the Greeks with the Hindūs, we find silks mentioned, when speaking of their dresses. Sir William Jones observes, that "silk was fabricated immemorially by the Indians."* The author of Remarks on the husbandry and internal commerce of Bengal, when speaking of the culture of the mulberry, and the process of the Hindus in regard to silk, mentions silk obtained from wild worms, which feed on other plants besides the mulberry. He says, "much silk of this kind supplies home consumption; much is brought from the countries situated on the N. E. border of Bengal, and on the southern frontier of Benares; much is exported wrought and unwrought to the western parts of India; and some enters into manufactures which

* See Sir Wm. Jones's Third Discourse to the Asiatic Society. (Works, vol. iii. p. 42.)