A. D. 14. 1^5 



Babylonia*!! tricrviaria or tricliniaria (coftly furniture of the eating room, 

 varioufly tranflated, quilts, carpets, and curtains), and the incenfe of 

 Perfia, were highly efteemed. 



But the moft important of all the foreign trades was that which Avas 

 carried on with the Oriental countries by the way of Egypt and the 

 Red fea. The commencement of this trade in the reign of the firfl, or 

 rather the fecond, Ptolemy, and the removal of it from Heroopolis at 

 the end of the canal to Berenice, are already related. The trade does 

 not appear to have ever increafed, and there is veafon to believe, thgt 

 after the reigns of the three firfl Ptolemies it was rather in a progreflive 

 decay, till the extindion of the Macedonian fovereignty in Egypt, when 

 it had dwindled down to fcarcely twenty fmall veflels in a year * : and 

 they feldom went beyond the mouth of the Red fea, where, on the Ara- 

 bian coaft, they found aflbrtments of merchandize fully fufficient for 

 their demand. But when Strabo was in Egypt, very foon after thefub- 

 jugation of the kingdom by the Romans, he learned that fleets of one 

 hundred and twenty veflels went from Myos Hormos (then the chief 

 port of the Egyptian trade in the Red fea, which he calls a great port, 

 protected by iflands before it, and a winding entrance through them) 

 and proceeded as far as India and the moft remote known parts of Ethi- 

 opia, from which they imported into Egypt the moft pretious mer- 

 chandize. But the veflels were fmall, and their timid coafting voyages 

 feem as yet to have extended no farther than Pattalaf, a port in the 

 delta, or ifland, formed by the branches of the river Sind, or Indus : and 

 there is reafon to believe, that many of then, completed their cargoes at 

 the port of Arabia Felix. A few of the traders from Egypt appear, 

 however, to have penetrated into India as far as the Ganges : but it is 

 moft probable, that they traveled over-land upon the magnificient royal 

 high way extending acrofs the country from the Indus to the Ganges %. 



* Mr. Browne fays, that duly tliirty-feveii vef- pjives the names of two ports and two or three na- 



fels are now (1792) employed in the Red fea by tions beyor/<l it on the well coaft, lie does it with 



perfons refiding in Egypt ; and that the feamen fome degree of exultation, that they were not to be 



are fo unflvilful, that continual building barely found in any preceding author. It is true, he 



keeps up the number. [Travels in E^ypt, l^fc. mentions a more diftant port called Perimula as the 



p. 75.] moft famous emporium of India, iltuated on the 



\ Strabo does not inform us what port or ports caft coaft and near the fouthcrn extremity of it, 



they failed to : and, indeed, he appears not to have and he notes the abundance of pearls found there, 



known a finglc fea port of India j for though he [L. ii, c. 73; L. vi, cc. 20, 23; Z,. ix, r. 35.] 



defcribes Pattalena as a delta of the Indus, con- 13ut as no fuch place is mentioned in the Periplu* 



laining the famous city of Pattala, he does not call of the Erythrxan fea, and as Ptolemy, from later 



that city an emporium or port ; and lic immediately information, wiiicli in geographical matters is pre- 



takes a prodigious flcip from it to Taprobanc. In ferable, places Perimula in India beyond the Gan- 



ihort, his knowlege of India is founded entirely up- gcs, we have reafon to fulpcfl Pliny's inforroation 



on the information of Alexander's officers. [L. xv, concerning it, as well as other parts of India, to be 



pp. loii, 1012, 1026. J Phny, who wrote, when confufed and erroneous, and alio to beheve tliat the 



the Oriental trade had been carried on a whole cen- merchants of Egypt were not willing to impart 



tury by the Egyptian-Greek fubjefts of Rome, their knowlege to their Roman mafters. 



lecms to make Pattala the only port reforted to J The navigation of the Ganges from the fea up 



by them, even after the difcovery of the monfoon, to Palibothra, as niiticed by Strabo, [^L. xv, p. 



which will be noticed afterwards ; and when he loioj nppenri pretty clearly to have been per- 



3 2 formed 



