76 PROCEEDINGS OF THE CALIFORNIA 
India, including the Bay of Bengal. It observes that the unexplored ocean 
extends to the southward until it joins the Atlantic, information generally 
concealed from the age of Necos, B. C. 616, until the re-discovery of the Cape 
of Good Hope by the Portuguese in the fifteenth century. 
Some authors say that Solomon’s ships circumnayigated Africa and re- 
turned by the Mediterranean laden with gold. More likely they availed 
of the monsoons and went to Ceylon, India and Sumatra. 
The Seres, described as the most remote people of Asia known even by re- 
port to the Europeans, are said to have manufactured sericum or silk gar- 
ments from threads finer than those of the spider, which they combed from 
(cocoons like) flowers. Nearchus, the admiral of Alexander’s fleet, speaks 
of this precious manufacture which found its way to Rome in the days of 
Cesar, and being a monopoly and subject to a long succession of tedious and 
dangerous sea and land carriages, sold at a price making it equal in value to 
gold. Seres also shipped to Arabia steel much superior to all other kinds, 
the product of a country in the eastern part of Asia. White rock candy and 
porcelain such as is produced in China, was also shipped, and all these bore 
the expense of a succession of land and water carriages. May not the steel 
have come from Japan and the porcelain from China? When the Portuguese 
arrived on the coast of Asia in their first voyages of discovery, they found it 
frequented by vessels of various nations. 
The natives of India, deriving all the necessities and enjoyments of life 
from their fertile soil and own industry, cared very little for productions of 
the West. Grecian merchants were obliged to pay for their cargoes chiefly 
in money, and Pliny says, that at the lowest computation, 500 sestertia (equal 
to £403,645 16s 8d sterling) was every year sent out of the Roman empire for 
the purchase of goods, which were sold in Rome at an advance of one hun- 
dred for one. A sum equally large was also paid to Arabian merchants for 
articles from their country of mere luxury and female vanity. 
The increasing demand of almost the entire Roman empire for Oriental lux- 
uries, all of which when crossing Egypt in transitu paid especially heavy im- 
port and export duties, increased the revenue of that country immensely; 
some idea of which is given us by Appian, who says Ptolemy Philadelphus at 
his death, left in his treasury 740,000 talents, (equal to £191,167,666 13s 4d 
sterling), much of which, however, may have been derived from the plunder 
looted by his father from the Persian empire. 
In thus glancing at the early records of ocean navigation among the Ara- 
bians, Phoenicians, Greeks, Hebrews, etc., we discover the important po- 
sition occupied by the Phoenicians, as the principal supporters of an early 
and extended intercourse with the Orient. We may draw some analogies 
therefrom in a future outline of the early commerce of Asiatic nations, among 
themselves, and their intercourse with the American continent in very early 
times. All these movements of peoples have an important ethnological bear- 
ing, as revealing the possible methods of migrations along the shore-lines of 
countries. 
From early maritime records here cited in illustration, we are led to infer 
that intercommunication by water, along coast-lines, was very ancient among 
all western nations at a very early period, and we are persuaded that all 
