THE SOURCE OF THE NILE. 449 



people. Immenfe riches flowed to him, therefore, on all 

 fides, and it was a circumftance particularly favourable to 

 merchants in that country, that it was governed by written 

 laws that fcreened their properties from any remarkable 

 violence or inj uftice. 



I suppose the phrafe in fcripture, " The law of the Medes 

 and Perfians, which altereth not*," mull mean only written 

 laws, by which thofe countries were governed, without be- 

 ing left to the difcretion of the judge, as all the Eaft was, 

 and as it actually now is. 



In this fituation the country was at the birth of Cyrus, 

 who, having taken Babylon f and flain BelfliazzerJ, became 

 mafter of the whole trade and riches of the Eaft. Whatever 

 character writers give of this great Prince, his conduct, with 

 regard to the commerce of the country, mews him to have 

 been a weak one: For, not content with the prodigious 

 profperity to which his dominions had arrived, by the mif- 

 fortune of other nations, and perhaps by the good faith 

 kept by his fubjeets to merchants, enforced by thofe written 

 laws, he undertook the moil abfurd and difaftrous project 

 of molefting the traders themfelves, and invading India, 

 that all at once he might render himfelf mailer of their 

 riches. He executed this fcheme jufl as abfurdly as he 

 formed it ; for, knowing that large caravans of merchants 

 came into Perfta and Ailyria from India, through the Aria- 

 na, (the defert coafl that runs all along the Indian Ocean to 

 Vol. I. 3 L the 



* Dan chap. vi. ver. 8. and Efther, chap. i. ver. 19. + Ezra, chap, v.ver. 14 

 and chap. vi. ver. 5. X Dan. chap. v. ver. 30. 



