OF CENTRAL AND EASTERN ASIA. 173 
Sinse were, either in whole or in part, the inhabitants of Mo- 
dern China. But D’ Anvittz, who largely reduced the world 
-of the ancients, fixed the Magnus Sinus in the Gulf of Siam, 
and allowed only a limited navigation along the coast of Cam- 
bodia. M. Gossrtin, with bolder scepticism, fixes the Sine 
on the coast of Siam, and never allows the ancients to have 
passed the Straits of Malacca. 
In comparing these three statements, there cannot, I appre- 
hend, be the smallest hesitation in preferring the one last men- 
tioned. There positively is, beyond India, no coast, besides 
that of Siam, which has an ocean on the west. Protemy men-— 
tions no island of a magnitude which could at all correspond 
to that of Sumatra. ven the Golden Chersonese, though it 
may suggest at first sight the peninsula of Malacca, will, when 
‘its details are examined, be found better to correspond to that. 
of Ava and Pegu. This solution having been acceded to by 
Mr Pivxerton, by Dr Vincent, and by all the eminent geo- 
graphers of the present age, its correctness may probably be 
considered as a point finally decided. 
We proceed, then, to the question respecting the Seres, a 
people who, by their mysterious remoteness, their wealth and 
‘civilization, and the peculiarities of their national character, 
‘excited an extraordinary interest in the ancient world. The 
information of the Greeks and Romans respecting their terri- 
_ tory, as well as a long series of intervening regions, was chiefly 
derived from a great mercantile caravan, which, setting out 
from the Bosphorus, traversed Asia from west to east, till it 
arrived on.the frontier of Serica. This communication does not 
_ appear to have been formed, till about the first century, during 
the most extended period of Roman power. Its object was to 
- supply that empire with the luxury of silk, the use of which, from 
being a rare appendage of greatness, had become common to 
almost 
