Chapter XXI: Book II (3)

The reader will observe, then, that, a vessel sailing from Suez or the Elanitic Gulf, in any of the summer months, will find a steady wind at north-west, which will carry it in the direction of the Gulf to Mocha. At Mocha, the coast is east and west to the Straits of Babelmandeb, so that the vessel from Mocha will have variable winds for a short space, but mostly westerly, and these will carry her on to the Straits. She is then done with the monsoon in the Gulf, which was from the north, and, being in the Indian Ocean, is taken up by the monsoon which blows in the summer months there, and is directly contrary to what obtains in the Gulf. This is a south-wester, which carries the vessel with a flowing sail to any part in India, without delay or impediment.

The same happens upon her return home. She sails in the winter months by the monsoon proper to that sea, that is, with a north-east, which carries her through the Straits of Babelmandeb. She finds, within the Gulf, a wind at south-east, directly contrary to what was in the ocean; but then her course is contrary likewise, so that a south-easter, answering to the direction of the Gulf, carries her directly to Suez, or the Elanitic Gulf, to whichever way she proposes going. Hitherto all is plain, simple, and easy to be understood; and this was the reason why, in the earliest ages, the India trade was carried on without difficulty.

Many doubts, however, have arisen about a port called _Ophir_, whence the immense quantities of gold and silver came, which were necessary at this time, when provision was making for building the Temple of Jerusalem. In what part of the world this Ophir was has not been yet agreed. Connected with this voyage, too, was one to Tarshish, which suffers the same difficulties; one and the same fleet performed them both in the same season.

In order to come to a certainty where this Ophir was, it will be necessary to examine what scripture says of it, and to keep precisely to every thing like description which we can find there, without indulging our fancy farther. _First_, then, the trade to Ophir was carried on from the Elanitic Gulf through the Indian Ocean. _Secondly_, The returns were gold, silver, and ivory, but especially silver[276]. _Thirdly_, The time of the going and coming of the fleet was precisely three years[277], at no period more nor less.

Now, if Solomon’s fleet sailed from the Elanitic Gulf to the Indian Ocean, this voyage of necessity must have been made by monsoons, for no other winds reign in that ocean. And, what certainly shews this was the case, is the precise term of three years, in which the fleet went and came between Ophir and Ezion-gaber. For it is plain, so as to supersede the necessity of proof or argument, that, had this voyage been made with variable winds, no limited term of years ever could have been observed in its going and returning. The fleet might have returned from Ophir in two years, in three, four, or five years; but, with variable winds, the return precisely in three years was not possible, whatever part of the globe Ophir might be situated in.

Neither Spain nor Peru could be Ophir; part of these voyages must have been made by variable winds, and the return consequently uncertain. The island of Ceylon, in the East Indies, could not be Ophir; the voyage thither is indeed made by monsoons, but we have shewed that a year is all that can be spent in a voyage to the East Indies; besides, Ceylon has neither gold nor silver, though it has ivory. St. Domingo has neither gold, nor silver, nor ivory. When the Tyrians discovered Spain, they found a profusion of silver in huge masses, but this they brought to Tyre by the Mediterranean, and then sent it to the Red Sea over land to answer the returns from India. Tarshish, too, is not found to be a port in any of these voyages, so that part of the description fails, nor were there ever elephants bred in Spain.

These mines of Ophir were probably what furnished the East with gold in the earliest times; great traces of excavation must, therefore, have appeared; yet in none of the places just mentioned are there great remains of any mines that have been wrought. The ancient traces of silver-mines in Spain are not to be found, and there never were any of gold. John Dos Santos[278], a Dominican friar, says, that on the coast of Africa, in the kingdom of Sofala, the main-land opposite to Madagascar, there are mines of gold and silver, than which none can be more abundant, especially in silver. They bear the traces of having been wrought from the earliest ages. They were actually open and working when the Portuguese conquered that part of the peninsula, and were probably given up since the discovery of the new world, rather from political than any other reasons.

John Dos Santos says, that he landed at Sofala in the year 1586; that he sailed up the great river Cuama as far as Tetè, where, always desirous to be in the neighbourhood of gold, his Order had placed their convent. Thence he penetrated for above two hundred leagues into the country, and saw the gold mines then working, at a mountain called Afura[279]. At a considerable distance from these are the silver mines of Chicoua; at both places there is great appearance of ancient excavations; and at both places the houses of the kings are built with mud and straw, whilst there are large remains of massy buildings of stone and lime.

It is a tradition which generally obtains in that country, that these works belonged to the Queen of Saba, and were built at the time, and for the purpose of the trade on the Red Sea: this tradition is common to all the Cafrs in that country. Eupolemus, an ancient author quoted by Eusebius[280], speaking of David, says, that he built ships at calls them, _metal-men_, to Orphi, or Ophir, an island in the Red Sea. Now, by the Red Sea, he understands the Indian Ocean[281]; and by Orphi, he probably meant the island of Madagascar; or Orphi (or Ophir) might have been the name of the Continent, instead of Sofala, that is, Sofala where the mines are might have been the main-land of Orphi.

The kings of the isles are often mentioned in this voyage; Socotra, Madagascar, the Commorras, and many other small islands thereabout, are probably those the scripture calls the _Isles_. All, then, at last reduces itself to the finding a place, either Sofala, or any other place adjoining to it, which avowedly can furnish gold, silver, and ivory in quantity, has large tokens of ancient excavations, and is at the same time under such restrictions from monsoons, that three years are absolutely necessary to perform the voyage, that it needs no more, and cannot be done in less, and this is Ophir.

Let us now try these mines of Dos Santos by the laws of the monsoons, which we have already laid down in describing the voyage to India. The fleet, or ship, for Sofala, parting in June from Ezion-gaber, would run down before the northern monsoon to Mocha. Here, not the monsoon, but the direction of the Gulf changes, and the violence of the south-westers, which then reign in the Indian Ocean, make themselves at times felt even in Mocha Roads. The vessel therefore comes to an anchor in the harbour of Mocha, and here she waits for moderate weather and a fair wind, which carries her out of the Straits of Babelmandeb, through the few leagues where the wind is variable. If her course was now to the East Indies, that is east-north-east, or north-east and by north, she would find a strong south-west wind that would carry her to any part of India, as soon as she cleared Cape Gardefan, to which she was bound.

But matters are widely different if she is bound for Sofala; her course is nearly south-west, and she meets at Cape Gardefan a strong south-wester that blows directly in her teeth. Being obliged to return into the gulf, she mistakes this for a trade-wind, because she is not able to make her voyage to Mocha but by the summer monsoon, which carries her no farther than the Straits of Babelmandeb, and then leaves her in the face of a contrary wind, a strong current to the northward, and violent swell.

The attempting this voyage with sails, in these circumstances, was absolutely impossible, as their vessels went only before the wind: if it was performed at all, it must have been by oars[282], and great havock and loss of men must have been the consequence of the several trials. This is not conjecture only; the prophet Ezekiel describes the very fact. Speaking of the Tyrian voyages probably of this very one he says, “Thy rowers have brought thee into great waters (the ocean): the east wind hath broken thee in the midst of the seas[283].” In short, the east, that is the north-east wind, was the very monsoon that was to carry them to Sofala, yet having no sails, being upon a lee-shore, a very bold coast, and great swell, it was absolutely impossible with oars to save themselves from destruction.

At last philosophy and observation, together with the unwearied perseverance of man bent upon his own views and interest, removed these difficulties, and shewed the mariners of the Arabian Gulf, that these periodical winds, which, in the beginning, they looked upon as invincible barriers to the trading to Sofala, when once understood, were the very means of performing this voyage safely and expeditiously.

The vessel trading to Sofala sailed, as I have said, from the bottom of the Arabian Gulf in summer, with the monsoon at north, which carried her to Mocha. There the monsoon failed her by the change of the direction of the Gulf. The south-west winds, which blow without Cape Gardefan in the Indian Ocean, forced themselves round the Cape so as to be felt in the road of Mocha, and make it uneasy riding there. But these soon changed, the weather became moderate, and the vessel, I suppose in the month of August, was safe at anchor under Cape Gardefan, where was the port which, many years afterwards, was called Promontorium Aromatum. Here the ship was obliged to stay all November, because all these summer months the wind south of the Cape was a strong south-wester, as hath been before said, directly in the teeth of the voyage to Sofala. But this time was not lost; part of the goods bought to be ready for the return was ivory, frankincense, and myrrh; and the ship was then at the principal mart for these.

I suppose in November the vessel sailed with the wind at north-east, with which she would soon have made her voyage: But off the coast of Melinda, in the beginning of December, she there met an anomalous monsoon at south-west, in our days first observed by Dr Halley, which cut off her voyage to Sofala, and obliged her to put in to the small harbour of _Mocha_, near Melinda, but nearer still to Tarshish, which we find here by accident, and which we think a strong corroboration that we are right as to the rest of the voyage. In the Annals of Abyssinia, we see that Amda Sion, making war upon that coast in the 14th century, in a list of the rebellious Moorish vassals, mentions the Chief of Tarshish as one of them, in the very situation where we have now placed him.

Solomon’s vessel, then, was obliged to stay at Tarshish till the month of April of the second year. In May, the wind set in at north-east, and probably carried her that same month to Sofala. All the time she spent at Tarshish was not lost, for part of her cargo was to be brought from that place, and she probably bought, bespoke, or left it there. From May of the second year, to the end of that monsoon in October, the vessel could not stir; the wind was north-east. But this time, far from being lost, was necessary to the traders for getting in their cargo, which we shall suppose was ready for them.

The ship sails, on her return, in the month of November of the second year, with the monsoon south-west, which in a very few weeks would have carried her into the Arabian Gulf. But off Mocha, near Melinda and Tarshish, she met the north-east monsoon, and was obliged to go into that port and stay there till the end of that monsoon; after which a south-wester came to her relief in May of the third year. With the May monsoon she ran to Mocha within the Straits, and was there confined by the summer monsoon blowing up the Arabian Gulf from Suez, and meeting her. Here she lay till that monsoon, which in summer blows northerly from Suez, changed to a south-east one in October or November, and that very easily brought her up into the Elanitic Gulf, the middle or end of December of the third year. She had no need of more time to complete her voyage, and it was not possible she could do it in less. In short, she changed the monsoon six times, which is thirty-six months, or three years exactly; and there is not another combination of monsoons over the globe, as far as I know, capable to effect the same. The reader will please to consult the map, and keep it before him, which will remove any difficulties he may have. It is for his instruction this map has been made, not for that of the learned prelate[284] to whom it is inscribed, much more capable of giving additional lights, than in need of receiving any information I can give, even on this subject.

The celebrated Montesquieu conjectures, that Ophir was really on the coast of Africa; and the conjecture of that great man merits more attention than the assertions of ordinary people. He is too sagacious, and too enlightened, either to doubt of the reality of the voyage itself, or to seek for Ophir and Tarshish in China. Uninformed, however, of the particular direction of the monsoons upon the coast, first very slightly spoken of by Eudoxus, and lately observed and delineated by Dr Halley, he was staggered upon considering that the whole distance, which employed a vessel in Solomon’s time for three years, was a thousand leagues, scarcely more than the work of a month. He, therefore, supposes, that the reason of delay was owing to the imperfection of the vessels, and goes into very ingenious calculations, reasonings, and conclusions thereupon. He conjectures, therefore, that the ships employed by Solomon were what he calls _junks_[285] of the Red Sea, made of papyrus, and covered with hides or leather.

Pliny[286] had said, that one of these junks of the Red Sea was twenty days on a voyage, which a Greek or Roman vessel would have performed in seven; and Strabo[287] had said the same thing before him.

This relative slowness, or swiftness, will not solve the difficulty. For, if these junks[288] were the vessels employed to Ophir, the long voyage, much more they would have been employed on the short one, to and from India; now they performed this within a year, which was all a Roman or Greek vessel could do, therefore this was not the cause. Those employed by Solomon were Tyrian and Idumean vessels, the best ships and sailers of their age. Whoever has seen the prodigious swell, the violent currents, and strong south-westers beyond the Straits of Babelmandeb, will not need any argument to persuade him, that no vessel made of papyrus, or leather, could live an hour upon that sea. The junks, indeed, were light and convenient boats, made to cross the narrow gulf between the Sabeans and Homerites, or Cushites, at Azab upon the Red Sea, and carry provisions from Arabia Felix to the more desert coast of Azab. I have hinted, that the names of places sufficiently demonstrate the great loss of men that happened to the traders to Sofala before the knowledge of the monsoons, and the introduction of the use of sails.

I shall now consider how far the thing is confirmed by the names of places in the language of the country, such as they have retained among them to the present day.

There are three Mochas mentioned in this voyage, situated in countries very dissimilar to, and distant from, each other. The first is in Arabia Deserta, in lat. 30° nearly, not far from the bottom of the Gulf of Suez. The second is in lat. 13°, a small distance from the Straits of Babelmandeb. The third Mocha is in lat. 3° south, near Tarshish, on the coast of Melinda. Now, the meaning of Mocha, in the Ethiopic, is _prison_; and is particularly given to these three places, because, in any of them, a ship is forced to stay or be detained for months, till the changing of the monsoon sets her at liberty to pursue her voyage. At Mocha, near the bottom of the Gulf of Suez, a vessel, wanting to proceed southward to Babelmandeb, is kept here in prison all winter, till the summer monsoon sets her at liberty. At Mocha, in Arabia Felix, the same happens to any vessel wanting to proceed to Suez in the summer months; she may come up from the Straits of Babelmandeb to Mocha Road by the accidental direction of the head of the Gulf; but, in the month of May, the north-west wind obliges her to put into Mocha, and there to stay till the south-easter relieves her in November. After you double Gardefan, the summer monsoon, at north-east, is carrying your vessel full sail to Sofala, when the anomalous monsoon takes her off the coast of Melinda, and forces her into Tarshish, where she is imprisoned for six months in the Mocha there. So that this word is very emphatically applied to those places where ships are necessarily detained by the change of monsoons, and proves the truth of what I have said.

The last Cape on the Abyssinian shore, before you run into the Straits, is Cape Defan, called by the Portuguese, _Cape Dafui_. This has no meaning in any language; the Abyssinians, on whose side it is, call it _Cape Defan_, the Cape of Burial. It was probably there where the east wind drove ashore the bodies of such as had been shipwrecked in the voyage. The point of the same coast, which, stretches out into the Gulf, before you arrive at Babelmandeb, was, by the Romans, called _Promontorium Aromatum_, and since, by the Portuguese, _Cape Gardesui_. But the name given it by the Abyssinians and sailors on the Gulf is, _Cape Gardesan_, the Straits of Burial.

Still nearer the Straits is a small port in the kingdom of Adel, called _Mete_, _i. e._ Death, or, he or they are dead. And more to the westward, in the same kingdom, is Mount Felix, corruptly so called by the Portuguese. The Latins call it Elephas Mons, the Mountain of the Elephant; and the natives, Jibbel Feel, which has the same signification. The Portuguese, who did not know that Jibbel Feel was Elephas Mons, being misled by the sound, have called it _Jibbel Felix_, the Happy Mountain, a name to which it has no sort of title.

The Straits by which we enter the Arabian Gulf are by the Portuguese called Babelmandeb, which is nonsense. The name by which it goes among the natives is Babelmandeb, the Gate or Port of Affliction. And near it Ptolemy[289] places a town he calls, in the Greek, Mandaeth, which appears to me to be only a corruption of Mandeb. The Promontory that makes the south side of the Straits, and the city thereupon, is _Diræ_, which means the Hades, or Hell, by Ptolemy[290] called Δηρη. This, too, is a translation of the ancient name, because Δηρη (or Diræ) has no signification in the Greek. A cluster of islands you meet in the canal, after passing Mocha, is called Jibbel Zekir, or, the Islands of Prayer for the remembrance of the dead. And still, in the same course up the Gulf, others are called Sebaat Gzier, Praise or Glory be to God, as we may suppose, for the return from this dangerous navigation.

All the coast to the eastward, to where Gardefan stretches out into the ocean, is the territory of Saba, which immemorially has been the mart of frankincense, myrrh, and balsam. Behind Saba, upon the Indian Ocean, is the _Regio Cinnamonifera_, where a considerable quantity of that wild cinnamon grows, which the Italian druggists call _canella_.

Inland near to Azab, as I have before observed, are large ruins, some of them of small stones and lime adhering strongly together. There is especially an aqueduct, which brought formerly a large quantity of water from a fountain in the mountains, which must have greatly contributed to the beauty, health, and pleasure of Saba. This is built with large massy blocks of marble, brought from the neighbouring mountains, placed upon one another without lime or cement, but joined with thick cramps, or bars of brass. There are likewise a number of wells, not six feet wide, composed of pieces of marble hewn to parts of a circle, and joined with the same bars of brass also. This is exceedingly surprising, for Agatharcides[291] tells us, that the Alileans and Cassandrins, in the southern parts of Arabia, (just opposite to Azab), had among them gold in such plenty, that they would give double the weight of gold for iron, triple its weight for brass, and ten times its weight for silver; that, in digging the earth, they found pieces of gold as big as olive-stones, but others much larger.

This seems to me extraordinary, if brass was at such a price in Arabia, that it could be here employed in the meanest and most common uses. However this be, the inhabitants of the Continent, and of the peninsula of Arabia opposite to it, of all denominations agree, that this was the royal seat of the Queen of Saba, famous in ecclesiastical history for her journey to Jerusalem; that these works belonged to her, and were erected at the place of her residence; that all the gold, silver, and perfumes came from her kingdom of Sofala, which was Ophir, and which reached from thence to Azab, upon the borders of the Red Sea, along the coast of the Indian Ocean.

It will very possibly be thought, that this is the place in which I should mention the journey that the Queen of Saba made into Palestine; but as the dignity of the expedition itself, and the place it holds in Jewish antiquities, merits that it should be treated in a place by itself, so the connection that it is supposed to have with the foundation of the monarchy of Abyssinia, the country whose history I am going to write, makes this particularly proper for the sake of connection; and I shall, therefore, continue the history of the trade of the Arabian Gulf to a period in which I can resume the narrative of this expedition without occasioning any interruption to either.

CHAP. V.

_Fluctuating State of the India Trade--Hurt by Military
Expeditions of the Persians--Revives under the Ptolemies--Falls
to Decay under the Romans._

The prosperous days of the commerce with the Elanitic Gulf seemed to be at this time nearly past; yet, after the revolt of the ten tribes, Edom remaining to the house of David, they still carried on a sort of trade from the Elanitic Gulf, though attended with many difficulties. This continued till the reign of Jehosaphat[292]; but, on Jehoram’s succeeding that prince, the Edomites[293] revolted and chose a king of their own, and were never after subject to the kings of Judah till the reign of Uzziah[294], who conquered Eloth, fortified it, and having peopled it with a colony of his own, revived the old traffic. This subsisted till the reign of Ahaz, when Rezin king of Damascus took Eloth[295], and expelled the Jews, planting in their stead a colony of Syrians. But he did not long enjoy this good fortune, for the year after, Rezin[296] was conquered by Tilgath-pileser; and one of the fruits of this victory was the taking of Eloth, which never after returned to the Jews, or was of any profit to Jerusalem.

The repeated wars and conquest to which the cities on the Elanitic Gulf had been subject, the extirpation of the Edomites, all the great events that immediately followed one another, of course disturbed the usual channel of trade by the Red Sea, whose ports were now consequently become unsafe by being in possession of strangers, robbers, and soldiers; it changed, therefore, to a place nearer the center of police and good government, than fortified and frontier towns could be supposed to be. The Indian and African merchants, by convention, met in Assyria, as they had done in Semiramis’s time; the one by the Persian Gulf and Euphrates, the other through Arabia. Assyria, therefore, became the mart of the India trade in the East.

The conquests of Nabopollaser, and his son Nebuchadnezzar, had brought a prodigious quantity of bullion, both silver and gold, to Babylon his capital. For he had plundered Tyre[297], and robbed Solomon’s Temple[298] of all the gold that had been brought from Ophir; and he had, besides, conquered Egypt and laid it waste, and cut off the communication of trade in all these places, by almost extirpating the people. Immense riches flowed to him, therefore, on all sides, and it was a circumstance particularly favourable to merchants in that country, that it was governed by written laws that screened their properties from any remarkable violence or injustice.

I suppose the phrase in scripture, “The law of the Medes and Persians, which altereth not[299],” must mean only written laws, by which those countries were governed, without being left to the discretion of the judge, as all the East was, and as it actually now is.

In this situation the country was at the birth of Cyrus, who, having taken Babylon[300] and slain Belshazzer[301], became master of the whole trade and riches of the East. Whatever character writers give of this great Prince, his conduct, with regard to the commerce of the country, shews him to have been a weak one: For, not content with the prodigious prosperity to which his dominions had arrived, by the misfortune of other nations, and perhaps by the good faith kept by his subjects to merchants, enforced by those written laws, he undertook the most absurd and disastrous project of molesting the traders themselves, and invading India, that all at once he might render himself master of their riches. He executed this scheme just as absurdly as he formed it; for, knowing that large caravans of merchants came into Persia and Assyria from India, through the Ariana, (the desert coast that runs all along the Indian Ocean to the Persian Gulf, almost entirely destitute of water, and very nearly as much so of provisions, both which caravans always carry with them), he attempted to enter India by the very same road with a large army, the very same way his predecessor Semiramis had projected 1300 years before; and as her army had perished, so did his to a man, without having ever had it in his power to take one pepper-corn by force from any part of India.

The same fortune attended his son and successor Cambyses, who, observing the quantity of gold brought from Ethiopia into Egypt, resolved to march to the source, and at once make himself master of those treasures by rapine, which he thought came too slowly through the medium of commerce.

Cambyses’s expedition into Africa is too well known for me to dwell upon it in this place. It hath obtained a celebrity by the absurdity of the project, by the enormous cruelty and havock that attended the course of it, and by the great and very just punishment that closed it in the end. It was one of those many monstrous extravagancies which made up the life of the greatest madman that ever disgraced the annals of antiquity. The basest mind is perhaps the most capable of avarice; and when this passion has taken possession of the human heart, it is strong enough to excite us to undertakings as great as any of those dictated by the noblest of our virtues.

Cambyses, amidst the commission of the most horrid excesses during the conquest of Egypt, was informed that, from the south of that country, there was constantly brought a quantity of pure gold, independent of what came from the top of the Arabic Gulf, which was now carried into Assyria, and circulated in the trade of his country. This supply of gold belonged properly and exclusively to Egypt; and a very lucrative, though not very extensive commerce, was, by its means, carried on with India. He found out that the people, possessing these treasures, were called _Macrobii_, which signifies _long livers_; and that they possessed a country divided from him by lakes, mountains, and deserts. But what still affected him most was, that in his way were a multitude of warlike Shepherds, with whom the reader is already sufficiently acquainted.

Cambyses, to flatter, and make peace with them, fell furiously upon all the gods and temples in Egypt; he murdered the sacred ox, the apis, destroyed Memphis, and all the public buildings wherever he went. This was a gratification to the Shepherds, being equally enemies to those that worshipped beasts, or lived in cities. After this introduction, he concluded peace with them in the most solemn manner, each nation vowing eternal amity with the other. Notwithstanding which, no sooner was he arrived at Thebes (in Egypt) than he detached a large army to plunder the Temple of Jupiter Ammon, the greatest object of the worship of these _shepherds_; which army utterly perished without a man remaining, covered, as I suppose, by the moving sands. He then began his march against the _Macrobii_, keeping close to the Nile. The country there being too high to receive any benefit from the inundation of the river, produced no corn, so that part of his army died for want of provision.

Another detachment of his army proceeded to the country of the Shepherds, who, indeed, furnished him with food; but, exasperated at the sacrilege he had committed against their god, they conduced his troops through places where they could procure no water. After suffering all this loss, he was not yet arrived beyond 24°, the parallel of Syené. From hence he dispatched ambassadors, or spies, to discover the country before him, finding he could no longer rely upon the Shepherds. These found it full of black warlike people, of great size, and prodigious strength of body; active, and continually exercised in hunting the lion, the elephant, and other monstrous beasts which live in these forests.

The inhabitants so abounded with gold, that the most common utensils and instruments were made of that metal; whilst, at the same time, they were utter strangers to bread of any kind whatever; and, not only so, but their country was, by its nature, incapable of producing any sort of grain from which bread could be made. They subsisted upon raw flesh alone, dried in the sun, especially that of the rhinoceros, the elephant, and giraffa, which they had slain in hunting. On such food they have ever since lived, and live to this day, and on such food I myself have lived with them; yet still it appears strange, that people confined to this diet, without variety or change, should have it for their characteristic that they were long livers.

They were not at all alarmed at the arrival of Cambyses’s ambassadors. On the contrary, they treated them as an inferior species of men. Upon asking them about their diet, and hearing it was upon bread, they called it _dung_, I suppose as having the appearance of that bread which I have seen the miserable Agows, their neighbours, make from seeds of bastard rye, which they collect in their fields under the burning rays of the sun. They laughed at Cambyses’s requisition of submitting to him, and did not conceal their contempt of his idea of bringing an army thither.

They treated ironically his hopes of conquest, even supporting all difficulties of the desert overcome, and his army ready to enter their country, and counseled him to return while he was well, at least for a time, till he should produce a man of his army that could bend the bow that they then sent him; in which case, he might continue to advance, and have hope of conquest.--The reason of their reference to the bow will be seen afterwards. I mention these circumstances of the quantity of gold, the hunting of elephants, their living upon the raw flesh, and, above all, the circumstances of the bow, as things which I myself can testify to have met with among this very people. It is, indeed, highly satisfactory in travelling, to be able to explain truths which, from a want of knowledge of the country alone, have been treated as falsehoods, and placed to the discredit of historians.

The Persians were all famous archers. The mortification, therefore, they experienced, by receiving the bow they could not bend, was a very sensible one, though the narrative of the quantity of gold the messengers had seen made a much greater impression upon Cambyses. To procure this treasure was, however, impracticable, as he had no provision, nor was there any in the way of his march. His army, therefore, wasted daily by death and dispersion; and he had the mortification to be obliged to retreat into Egypt, after part of his troops had been reduced to the necessity of eating each other[302].

Darius, king of Persia, attempted to open this trade in a much more worthy and liberal manner, as he sent ships down the river Indus into the ocean, whence they entered the Red Sea. It is probable, in this voyage, he acquired all the knowledge necessary for establishing this trade in Persia; for he must have passed through the Persian Gulf, and along the whole eastern coast of Arabia; he must have seen the marts of perfumes and spices that were at the mouth of the Red Sea, and the manner of bartering for gold and silver, as he was necessarily in those trading places which were upon the very same coast from which the bullion was brought. I do not know, then, why M. de Montesquieu[303] has treated this expedition of Darius so contemptuously, as it appears to have been executed without great trouble or expence, and terminated without loss or hardship; the strongest proof that it was at first wisely planed. The prince himself was famous for his love of learning, which we find by his anxiety to be admitted among the Magi, and the sense he had of that honour, in causing it to be engraved upon his tomb.

The expedition of Alexander into India was, of all events, that which most threatened the destruction of the commerce of the Continent, or the dispersing it into different channels throughout the East: First, by the destruction of Tyre, which must have, for a time, annihilated the trade by the Arabian Gulf; then by his march through Egypt into the country of the Shepherds, and his intended further progress into Ethiopia to the head of the Nile. If we may judge of what we hear of him in that part of his expedition, we should be apt not to believe, as others are fond of doing, that he had schemes of commerce mingled with those of conquests. His anxiety about his own birth at the Temple of Jupiter Ammon, this first question that he asked of the priest, “Where the Nile had its source,” seemed to denote a mind busied about other objects; for else he was then in the very place for information, being in the temple of that horned god[304], the deity of the Shepherds, the African carriers of the Indian produce; a temple which, though in the midst of sand, and destitute of gold or silver, possessed more and better information concerning the trade of India and Africa, than could be found in any other place on the Continent. Yet we do not hear of one question being made, or one arrangement taken, relative to opening the India trade with Thebes, or with Alexandria, which he built afterwards.

After having viewed the main ocean to the south, he ordered Nearchus with his fleet to coast along the Persian Gulf, accompanied by part of the army on land for their mutual assistance, as there were a great many hardships which followed the march of the army by land, and much difficulty and danger attended the shipping as they were sailing in unknown seas against the monsoons. Nearchus himself informed the king at Babylon of his successful voyage, who gave him orders to continue it into the Red Sea, which he happily accomplished to the bottom of the Arabian Gulf.

We are told it was his intention to carry on the India trade by the Gulf of Persia, for which reason he broke down all the cataracts and dams which the Persians had built over the rivers communicating with the Euphrates. No use, however, seems to have been made of his knowledge of Arabia and Ethiopia, which makes me imagine this expedition of Alexander’s fleet was not an idea of his own. It is, indeed, said, that when Alexander came into India, the southern or Indian Ocean was perfectly unknown; but I am rather inclined to believe from this circumstance, that this voyage was made from some memorials remaining concerning the voyage of Darius. The fact and circumstances of Darius’s voyage are come down to us, and, by these very same means, it must be probable they reached Alexander, who I do not believe ever intended to carry on the India trade at Babylon.

To render it impossible, indeed, he could not have done three things more effectual than he did, when he destroyed Tyre, and dispersed its inhabitants, persecuted the Orites, or land-carriers, in the Ariana, and built Alexandria upon the Mediterranean; which last step fixed the Indian trade in that city, and would have kept it there eternally, had the Cape of Good Hope never been discovered.

The Ptolemies, the wisest princes that ever sat upon the throne of Egypt, applied with the utmost care and attention to cultivate the trade of India, to keep up perfect and friendly understanding with every country that supplied any branch of it, and, instead of disturbing it either in Asia, Arabia, or Ethiopia, as their predecessors had done, they used their utmost efforts to encourage it in all quarters.

Ptolemy I. was then reigning in Alexandria, the foundation of whose greatness he not only laid, but lived to see it arrive at the greatest perfection. It was his constant saying, that the true glory of a king was not in being rich himself, but making his subjects so. He, therefore, opened his ports to all trading nations, encouraged strangers of every language, protected caravans, and a free navigation by sea, by which, in a few years, he made Alexandria the great store-house of merchandize, from India, Arabia, and Ethiopia. He did still further to insure the duration of his kingdom, at the same time that he shewed the utmost disinterestedness for the future happiness of his people. He educated his son, Ptolemy Philadelphus, with the utmost care, and the happy genius of that prince had answered his father’s utmost expectations; and, when he arrived at the age of governing, the father, worn out by the fatigue of long wars, surrendered the kingdom to his son.

Ptolemy had been a soldier from his infancy, and consequently kept up a proper military force, that made him every where respected in these warlike and unsettled times. He had a fleet of two hundred ships of war constantly ready in the port of Alexandria, the only part for which he had apprehensions. All behind him was wisely governed, whilst it enjoyed a most flourishing trade, to the prosperity of which peace is necessary. He died in peace and old age, after having merited the glorious name of _Soter_, or _Saviour of the kingdom_, which he himself had founded, the greatest part of which differed from him in language, colour, habit, and religion.

It is with astonishment we see how thoroughly he had established the trade of India, Ethiopia, and Arabia, and what progress he had already made towards uniting it with that of Europe, by a passage in Athenæus[305], who mentions a festival and entertainment given by his son, Ptolemy Philadelphus, to the people of Alexandria at his accession, while his father was alive, but had just given up his crown.

There was in this procession a great number of Indian women, besides of other countries; and by Indians we may understand, not only the Asiatic Indians, but the Abyssinians, and the inhabitants of the higher part of Africa, as all these countries were comprehended under the common appellation of _India_. These were in the habit of slaves, and each led, or was followed by, a camel loaded with incense of Sheher, and cinnamon, besides other aromatics. After these came a number of Ethiopian blacks carrying the teeth of 600 elephants. Another troop had a prodigious quantity of ebony; and again others loaded with that finest gold, which is not dug from the mine, but washed from the mountains by the tropical rains in small pieces, or pellets, which the natives and traders at this day call _Tibbar_. Next came a pack of 24,000 Indian dogs, all Asiatics, from the peninsula of India, followed by a prodigious number of foreign animals, both beasts and birds, paroquets, and other birds of Ethiopia, carried in cages; 130 Ethiopian sheep, 300 Arabian, and 20 from the Isle Nubia[306]; 26 Indian buffaloes, white as snow, and eight from Ethiopia; three brown bears, and a white one, which last must have been from the north of Europe; 14 leopards, 16 panthers, four lynxes, one giraffa, and a rhinoceros of Ethiopia.

When we reflect upon this prodigious mixture of animals, all so easily procured at one time, without preparation, we may imagine, that the quantity of merchandises, for common demand, which accompanied them, must have been in the proper proportion.

The current of trade ran towards Alexandria with the greatest impetuosity, all the articles of luxury of the East were to be found there. Gold and silver, which were sent formerly to Tyre, came now down to the Isthmus (for Tyre was no more) by a much shorter carriage, thence to Memphis, whence it was sent down the Nile to Alexandria. The gold from the west and south parts of the Continent reached the same port with much less time and risk, as there was now no Red Sea to pass; and here was found the merchandise of Arabia and India in the greatest profusion.

To facilitate the communication with Arabia, Ptolemy built a town on the coast of the Red Sea, in the country of the Shepherds, and called it _Berenice_[307], after his mother. This was intended as a place of necessary refreshment for all the traders up and down the Gulf, whether of India or Ethiopia; hence the cargoes of merchants, who were afraid of losing the monsoons, or had lost them, were carried by the inhabitants of the country, in three days, to the Nile, and there embarked for Alexandria. To make the communication between the Nile and the Red Sea still more commodious, this prince tried an attempt (which had twice before miscarried with very great loss) to bring a canal[308] from the Red Sea to the Nile, which he actually accomplished, joining it to the Pelusiac, or Eastern branch of the Nile. Locks and sluices moreover are mentioned as having been employed even in those early days by Ptolemy, but very trifling ones could be needed, for the difference of level is there but very small.

This noble canal, one hundred yards broad, was not of that use to trade which was expected; merchants were weary of the length of time consumed in going to the very bottom of the Gulf, and afterwards with this inland navigation of the canal, and that of the Nile, to Alexandria. It was therefore much more expeditious to unload at Berenice, and, after three days journey, send their merchandise directly down to Alexandria. Thus the canal was disused, the goods passed from Berenice to the Nile by land, and that road continues open for the same purpose to this day.

It should appear, that Ptolemy had employed the vessels of India and the Red Sea, to carry on his commerce with the peninsula, and that the manner of trading directly to India with his own ships, was either not known or forgotten. He therefore sent two ambassadors, or messengers, Megasthenes and Denis, to observe and report what was the state of India since the death of Alexander. These two performed their voyage safely and speedily. The account they gave of India, if it was strictly a true one, was, in all respects, perfectly calculated to animate people to the further prosecution of that trade. In the mean time, in order to procure more convenience for vessels trading on the Red Sea, he resolved to attempt the penetrating into that part of Ethiopia which lies on that sea, and, as historians imagine, with an intention to plunder the inhabitants of their riches.

It must not, however, be supposed, that Ptolemy was not enough acquainted with the productions of a country so near to Egypt, as to know this part of it had neither gold nor silver, whilst it was full of forests likewise; for it was that part of Ethiopia called Barbaria, at this day Barabra, inhabited by shepherds wandering with their cattle about the neighbouring mountains according as the rains fall. Another more probable conjecture was, that he wanted, by bringing about a change of manners in these people, to make them useful to him in a matter that was of the highest importance.

Ptolemy, like his father, had a very powerful fleet and army, he but was inferior to many of the princes, his rivals, in elephants, of which great use was then made in war. These Ethiopians were hunters, and killed them for their subsistence. Ptolemy, however, wished to have them taken alive, being numerous, and hoped both to furnish himself, and dispose of them as an article of trade, to his neighbours.

There is something indeed ridiculous in the manner in which he executed this expedition. Aware of the difficulty of subsisting in that country, he chose only a hundred Greek horsemen, whom he covered with coats of monstrous appearance and size, which left nothing visible but the eyes of the rider. Their horses too were disguised by huge trappings, which took from them all proportion and shape. In this manner they entered this part of Ethiopia, spreading terror every where by their appearance, to which their strength and courage bore a strict proportion whenever they came to action. But neither force nor intreaty could gain any thing upon these Shepherds, or ever make them change or forsake the food they had been so long accustomed to; and all the fruit Ptolemy reaped from this expedition, was to build a city, by the sea-side, in the south-east corner of this country, which he called Ptolemais Theron, or Ptolemais in the country of wild beasts.

I have already observed, but shall again repeat it, that the reason why ships, in going up and down the Red Sea, kept always upon the Ethiopian shore, and why the greatest number of cities were always built upon that side is, that water is much more abundant on the Ethiopian side than the Arabian, and it was therefore of the greatest consequence to trade to have that coast fully discovered and civilized. Indeed it is more than probable, that nothing further was intended by the expedition of the hundred Greeks, just now mentioned, than to gain sufficient intelligence how this might be done most perfectly.

Ptolemy Evergetes, son and successor of Ptolemy Philadelphus, availed himself of this discovery. Having provided himself amply with necessaries for his army, and ordered a fleet to coast along beside him, up the Red Sea, he penetrated quite through the country of the Shepherds into that of the Ethiopian Troglodytes, who are black and woolly-headed, and inhabit the low country quite to the mountains of Abyssinia. Nay[309], he even ascended those mountains, forced the inhabitants to submission, built a large temple at Axum, the capital of Sirè, and raised a great many obelisks, several of which are standing to this day. Afterwards proceeding to the south-east, he descended into the cinnamon and myrrh country, behind Cape Gardefan, (the Cape that terminates the Red Sea, and the Indian Ocean) from this crossed over to Arabia, to the Homerites, being the same people with the Abyssinians, only on the Arabian shore. He then conquered several of the Arabian princes, who first resisted him, and had it in his power to have put an end to the trade of India there, had he not been as great a politician as he was a warrior. He used his victory, therefore, in no other manner, than to exhort and oblige these princes to protect trade, encourage strangers, and, by every means, provide for the surety of neutral intercourse, by making rigorous examples of robbers by sea and land.

The reigns of the latter Ptolemies were calculated to bring this commerce to a decline, had it not been for two great events, the fall of Carthage, destroyed by Scipio, and that of Corinth, by the consul Mummius. The importance of these events to Alexandria seems to have sustained the prosperity of Egypt, even against the ravages committed in the war between Ptolemy the VI. and VII. Alexandria was then besieged, and not only deprived of its riches, but reduced to the utmost want of necessaries, and the horrid behaviour of Ptolemy VII. (had it continued) would have soon rendered that city desolate. The consequence of such a conduct, however, made a strong impression on the prince himself, who, at once recalling his unjust edicts, by which he had banished all foreign merchants from Alexandria, became on a sudden wholly addicted to commerce, the encourager of arts and sciences, and the protector of strangers.

The impolitic conduct in the beginning of his reign, however, had affected trade even in India. For the story preserved by Posidonius, and very improperly criticised by Strabo, seems to import little less. One day, the troops posted on the Arabian Gulf found a ship abandoned to the waves, on board of which was one Indian only, half dead with hunger and thirst, whom they brought to the king. This Indian declared he sailed from his own country, and, having lost his course and spent all his provisions, he was carried to the place where he was found, without knowing where he was, and after having survived the rest of his companions: he concluded an imperfect narrative, by offering to be a guide to any person his majesty would send to India. His proposals were accordingly accepted, and Eudoxus was named by the king to accompany him. Strabo[310] indeed laughs at this story. However, we must say, he has not seized the most ridiculous parts of it.

We are told that the king ordered the Indian to be taught Greek, and waited with patience till he had learned that language. Surely, before any person could thus instruct him, the master must have had some language in common with his scholar, or he had better have taught Eudoxus the Indian language, as it would have been as easy, and of much more use in the voyage he was to undertake. Besides, is it possible to believe, after the many years the Egyptians traded backwards and forwards to India, that there was not a man in Alexandria who could interpret for him to the king, when such a number of Egyptians went every year to India to trade, and stayed there for months each time? Could Ptolemy Philadelphus, at his father’s festival, find 600 Indian female slaves, all at once, in Alexandria; and, after the trade had lasted so much longer, were the people from India decreased, or would their language be less understood? The king’s wisdom, moreover, did not shew itself greatly, when he was going to trust a ship with his subjects to so skilful a pilot as this Indian, who, in the first voyage, had lost himself and all his companions.