the Land upon the Sea at the Head of the Persian Gulf. 403 



marks being confined to the discussion of the statement 

 of Nearchus, and to the adducing of many other ancient au- 

 thorities, which even, according to his own admission, con- 

 tain " some discrepancies," and are not always " very expli- 

 cable," and — as might naturally be predicted of them if a 

 portion only of the changes which I contend for have taken 

 place, — require much straining and qualifying to make them 

 intelligible and at all applicable (as Mr. Carter contends they 

 are,) to the present condition of the Tigris and Euphrates and 

 the countries at the head of the Persian Gulf. 



In the observations, therefore, which I have at present to 

 make in reply to Mr. Carter, I ought perhaps to confine my- 

 self to the consideration of Nearchus's statement alone ; but 

 as my inference from the passage in Pliny has been disputed 

 by the writer of a criticism upon my Origines Biblicce con- 

 tained in the number of the Quarterly Review for November 

 1834*, I trust that I may be permitted to add a few brief re- 

 marks upon the subject of that paper also. 



We find it, then, expressly recorded by Arrian, that " from 

 the mouth of the Euphrates the distance up the river to Ba- 

 bylon was stated by Nearchus to be 3300 stadiaf." Nothing 

 can be plainer than this statement, and the only point with 

 respect to it which requires to be determined is the equivalent 

 in English miles of the distance thus recorded. For this pur- 

 pose it is not necessary to enter into any investigation of that 

 difficult and most unsatisfactory subject of discussion, the 

 length of the Greek stadium generally. We have here only 

 to consider that Nearchus, in his navigation round the coast 

 of Persia, made use of a certain standard of measurement, in 

 which the various distances sailed by him from one station to 

 another are registered ; and as the actual localities of many of 

 those stations appear to be absolutely determinable, so like- 

 wise ought there not to be any great difficulty in the way of 

 determining the length of the unit of measurement used in 

 calculating those distances. 



The learned Dean Vincent, in the " Preliminary Disquisi- 

 tions" to his able work " The Commerce and Navigation of the 

 Ancients in the Indian Ocean J," discusses at length the hy- 

 pothesis of D'Anville, that the stadium employed by Nearchus 

 is one " of 51 French toises, about 15 of which are equal to a 

 mile Roman, 16 to a mile English, and 1111 to a degree §;" 



* Quart. Rev., vol. lii. p. 505. 



"Y 'Aero Sg Thf <f6fiotTos T» 'Ei/iPQUTH ig n BafivT^aux ■a'hovv T^Lyn Ng«^x*» 

 «-«S/»f ihoti es T^iax,i>iiig x,ui TPioccooiits. — Hist. Indie., p. 357. 

 X 2 vols. 4to. London, 1807. 

 § See Vincent's Voyage of Nearchus^ Pref., p. xi. 



3 F 2 



