558 



MEDLEVAL HISTOEY. 



[Part V. 



ance of the soil, the profusion of all fniits except that 

 of the vine, the natural wealth of the inhabitants, the 

 mildness of the government, the absence of vexatious 

 laws, the happiness of the people, and the duration of 

 life, which was prolonged to more than one hundred 

 years. They spoke of a commerce with China, but it 

 was evidently overland, by way of Lidia and Tartary, the ■ 

 country of the Seres being visible, they said, beyond the 

 Himalaya mountains.^ The ambassadors described the 

 mode of trading among their own countrymen precisely 

 as it is practised by the Veddahs in Ceylon at the 

 present day^ ; the parties to the barter being concealed 

 from each other, the one depositing the articles to be 

 exchanged in a given place, and the other, if they agree 

 to the terms, removing them unseen, and leaving beliind 

 what they give in return. 



It is impossible to read this narrative of Phny without 

 being struck with its fidehty to truth in many particulars ; 

 and even one passage, to which exception has been taken 

 as an imposture of the Singhalese envoys, when they 

 manifested surprise at the quarters in which the sun rose 

 and set in Italy, has been referred^ to the peculiar system 

 of the Hindus, in whose maps north and south are left 

 and right ; but it may be explained by the fact of the sun 

 passing overhead in Ceylon, in his transit to the northern 

 solstice ; instead of hanging about the south, as in Italy, 

 after acquiring some elevation above the horizon. 



The rapid progress of navigation and discovery in 

 the Indian seas, within the interval of sixty or seventy 

 years which elapsed between the death of Phny and 

 the compilation of the great work of Ptolemy is in no 

 instance more strikingly exhibited than on comparing 

 the information concerning Taprobane, which is given 

 by the latter in his " System of Geography," '* with the 



1 " Ultra monies Emodos Seras 

 qtioque ab ipsis aspici notos etiam 

 commercio." — Pliny, lib. vi. c. 24. 



^ See tlie chapter on the Veddahs, 

 Vol. II. Part II. ch. iii. 



3 See WiLrOED's Sacred Islands 

 of the West, Asiat. Res., vol. x. p. 

 41. 



* Ptolemy, Geog. lib. -vii. c. 4., tab. 

 xii. Asise. lu one important parti- 



