The pepper plant,
the buffalo, the camelopard, the musk animal, &c.:
The rhinoceros, he says,
he saw only at a distance; he procured some teeth of the hippopotamus, but
never saw the animal itself. In the palace of the king of Abyssinia, the
unicorn was represented in brass, but he never saw it. It is extraordinary
that he makes no mention of cinnamon, as a production of Ceylon.
The most important points respecting the state of Eastern commerce in the
age of Cosmas, as established by his information, are the following: that
Ceylon was the central mart between the commerce of Europe, Africa, and the
west of India, and the east of India and China; that none of the foreign
merchants who visited Ceylon were accustomed to proceed to the eastern
regions of Asia, but received their silks, spices, &c. as they were
imported into Ceylon; and that, as cloves are particularly specified as
having been imported into Ceylon from China, the Chinese at this period
must have traded with the Moluccas on the one hand, and with Ceylon on the
other.
Cosmas notices the great abundance of silk in Persia, which he attributes
to the short land carriage between it and China.
In our account of the very early trade of Carthage, a branch of it was
described from Herodotus, which the Carthaginians carried on, without the
use or intervention of words, with a remote African tribe. Of a trade
conducted in a similar manner, Cosmas gives us some information; according
to him, the king of the Axumites, on the east coast of Africa, exchanged
iron, salt, and cattle, for pieces of gold with an inland nation, whom he
describes as inhabiting Ethiopia. It may be remarked in confirmation of the
accuracy, both of Herodotus and of Cosmas, in what they relate on this
subject, and as an illustration and proof of the permanency and power of
custom among barbarous nations, that Dr. Shaw and Cadamosto (in Purchas's
Pilgrimage) describe the same mode of traffic as carried on in their times
by the Moors on the west coast of Africa, with the inhabitants of the banks
of the Niger.
In the middle of the sixth century, an immense and expensive fleet, fitted
out by the Emperor Justinian for the purpose of invading the Vandals of
Africa, gives us, in the detail of its preparation and exploits,
considerable insight into the maritime state of the empire at this period.
Justinian assembled at Constantinople 500 transports of various sizes,
which it is not easy exactly to calculate; the presumption derived from the
accounts we have is, that the smallest were 30 tons, and the largest 500
tons; and that the aggregate tonnage of the whole amounted to about 100,000
tons: an immense fleet, even compared with the fleets of modern times. On
board of this fleet there were 35,000 seamen and soldiers, and 5000 horses,
besides arms, engines, stores, and an adequate supply of water and
provisions, for a period, probably, of two or three months.
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