198 ON THE ANCIENT GEOGRAPITY 
menced a laborious journey to that capital, which could not be 
performed in less than seven months. Admitting, with Prorx- 
my, that a large allowance is to be made for the delays and dif- 
ficulties of the journey, and perhaps for some degree of wanton 
and boastful exaggeration, there will remain enough to carry 
them nearly to the extremity of Asia; and it will remain quite 
unaccountable, how any period approaching to the above, could 
be spent in travelling to a place which could not be farther 
distant than five or six hundred miles. 
If the distance and direction correspond thus ill, the deserip- 
tion is, if possible, still more discordant. So far was Protemy 
from the remotest idea of Sera being in India, or near the 
Ganges, that he fixes it about forty degrees, nearly half the 
length of Asia, east from that river. The most profound igno- 
rance of this quarter of India would be necessary to account 
for so unheard of an error. On the contrary, we have found 
this region, which gives rise to the Ganges and its tributaries, 
to be one of those in which Protemy has displayed the most 
decided superiority to modern information. In representing 
the heads of the Ganges by the rivers of Serica, Protemy 
would have committed a very extraordinary error indeed ;. for 
these run south-west, while the others are made to run north- 
east ; a change of direction quite unheard of, With regard to 
the geographical relations of Serica, it is needless to mention 
them, as it is evident that all these, by the present —_ 
must be entirely thrown up. 
This system, like the other, rests solely, I apprehend, signa 
nominal arguments. Some writers mention Serinda, or India 
Serica, a country in the north of Indostan, which actually pro- 
duced silk, the staple of Serica. What is more, there are two, 
Stephen of Byzantium, and the anonymous geographer of Ra- 
venna, who appear to consider this as the Serica, and the Seres 
as 
