From These Points They Stretch Out To The Open
Sea At Once, Leaving All The Windings Of The Gulfs And
Bays at a distance,
and make directly for their several destinations on the coast of India.
Those that are intended
For Limurike waiting some time before they sail,
but those that are destined for Barugaza, or Scindi, seldom more than three
days."
If we may credit Pliny, the Greek merchants of Egypt for some years after
the discovery of the monsoon, did not venture further out to sea than was
absolutely necessary, by crossing the widest part of the entry of the
Persian Gulf, to reach Patala at the mouth of the Indus; but they
afterwards found shorter routes, or rather stretched more to the south, so
as to reach lower down on the coast of India: they also enlarged their
vessels, carried cargoes of greater value, and in order to beat off the
pirates, which then as at present infested this part of the Indian coast,
they put on board their vessels a band of archers. Myos Hormos, or
Berenice, was the port on the Red Sea from which they sailed; in forty days
they arrived at Musiris, on the west coast of India. The homeward passage
was begun in December or January, when the north east monsoon commenced;
this carried them to the entrance of the Red Sea, up which to their port
they were generally favored by southerly winds.
As there is no good reason to believe that the ancients made regular
voyages to India, previously to the discovery of the monsoons; yet, as it
is an undoubted fact that some of the exclusive productions of that
country, particularly cinnamon, were obtained by them, through their
voyages on the Red Sea; it becomes an important and interesting enquiry, by
what means these productions were brought to those places on this sea, from
which the Romans obtained them. In our opinion, the Arabians were the first
who introduced Indian productions into the west from the earliest period to
which history goes back, and they continued to supply the merchants who
traded on the Red Sea with them, till, by the discovery of the monsoon, a
direct communication was opened between that sea and India.
At least seventeen centuries before the Christian era, we have undoubted
evidence of the traffic of the Arabians in the spices, &c. of India; for in
the 27th chapter of Genesis we learn, that the Ishmaelites from Gilead
conducted a caravan of camels laden with the spices of India, and the
balsam and myrrh of Hadraumaut, in the regular course of traffic to Egypt
for sale. In the 30th chapter of Exodus, cinnamon, cassia, myrrh,
frankincense, &c. are mentioned, some of which are the exclusive produce of
India; these were used for religious purposes, but at the same time the
quantities of them specified are so great, that it is evident they must
have been easily obtained. Spices are mentioned, along with balm and other
productions of Canaan, in the present destined by Jacob for Joseph.
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