This
Distance Nearchus Was Above Seventy Days In Sailing.
It must be
recollected, however, that when he first set out the monsoon was adverse,
and that for twenty-four days he lay in harbour:
Making the proper
deductions for these circumstances, he was not at sea more than forty days
with a favourable wind; which gives rather more than fifteen miles a day.
The Houghton East Indiaman made the same run in thirteen days; and, on her
return, was only five days from Gomeroon to Scindy Bay.
The manners of the wretched inhabitants have occasionally been already
noticed; but Nearchus dwells upon some further particulars, which, from
their conformity with modern information, are worthy of remark. Their
ordinary support is fish, as the name of Icthyophagi, or fish-eaters,
implies; but why they are for this reason specified as a separate tribe
from the Gadrosians, who live inland, does not appear. Ptolomy considers
all this coast as Karmania, quite to Mosarna; and whether Gadrosia is a
part of that province, or a province itself, is a matter of no importance;
but the coast must have received the name Nearchus gives it from Nearchus
himself; for it is Greek, and he is the first Greek who explored it. It
may, perhaps, be a translation of a native name, and such translations the
Greeks indulged in sometimes to the prejudice of geography. "But these
people, though they live on fish, are few of them fishermen, for their
barks are few, and those few very mean and unfit for the service.
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