138 COSMOS. 



made acquainted with the periodic prevalence of the monsoons 

 through their colonies on the Persian Gulf, and their inter- 

 course with the inhabitants of Gerrha, must have visited the 

 western coasts of the Indian Peninsula. Christopher Colum- 

 bus was even persuaded that Ophir (the El Dorado of Solo- 

 mon) and Mount Sopora were a portion of Eastern Asia, the 

 Chersonesus Aurea of Ptolemy.* As it appears difficult to 

 form an idea of Western India as a fruitful source of gold, it 

 will, I think, scarcely be necessary to refer to the " gold-seek- 

 ing ants" (or to the unmistakable account given by Ctesias 

 of a foundery in which, however, gold and iron were said, ac- 

 cording to his account, to be fused together),t it being sufficient 

 to direct attention to the geographical proximity of Southern 

 Arabia, of the island of Dioscorides (the Diu Zokotora of the 

 moderns, a corruption of the Sanscrit Dvipa Sukhatara), cul- 

 tivated by Indian colonists, and to the auriferous "coast of 

 Sofala in Eastern Africa. Arabia and the island last referred 

 to, to the southeast of the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb, may be 

 regarded as affording intermediate -links of connection between 

 the Indian Peninsula and Eastern Africa for the combined 

 commerce of the Hebrews and Phoenicians. The Indians had, 



reared -by the priests in the sanctuary of Hera. From a passage in 

 Eustathius (Comm. in Iliad, t. iv., p. 225, ed. Lips., 1827) on the sacred- 

 uess of peacocks in Libya, it has been unjustly inferred that the rauj 

 also belonged to Africa. ^ 



* See the remarks of Columbus on Ophir and el Monte Sopora, 

 " which Solomon's fleet could not reach within a term of three years," 

 in Navarrele, Viages y Descubrimientos que hicidron los Espanoles, t. i., 

 p. 103. In another work, the great discoverer says, still in the hope 

 of reaching Ophir, " the excellence and power of the gold of Ophir 

 can not be described ; he who possesses it does what he will in this 

 world ; nay, it even enables him to draw souls from purgatory to para- 

 dise" (" llega a que echa las aniinas al paraiso"), Carta del Almirante, 

 escritn, en la Jamaica, 1503 ; Navurrete, t. i., p. 309. (Compare my 

 Examen Critique, t. i., p. 70 and 109 ; t. ii., p. 38-44 ; and on the prop- 

 er duration of the Tarshish voyage, see Keil, op. cit., s. 106.) 



t Ctesice Cnidii Op'crum Reliquite, ed. Felix Baehr, 1824, cap. iv. and 

 xii., p. 248, 271, and 300. But the accounts collected by the physician 

 at the Persian court from native sources, which are not, therefore, alto- 

 gether to be rejected, refer to districts in the north of India, and from 

 these the gold of the Daradasmust have come by many circuitous routes 

 to Abhira, the mouth of the Indus, and the coast of Malabar. (Com- 

 pare ray Asie Centrale, t. i., p. 157, and Lassen, Ind. Allerthumskunde, 

 bd. i., s. 5.) May not the wonderful story related by Ctesias of an 

 Indian spring, at the bottom of which iron was found, which was very 

 malleable when the fluid gold had run off) have been based on a mis- 

 understood account of a foundery ? The molten iron was probably 

 taken for gold owing to its color, and when the yellow color had disap- 

 peared in cooling, the black mass of iron was found below it. 



