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king of Egypt, some time before, dispatched a fleet of Phoenicians 

 with orders to sail round the coast of Lybia*, and by that route 

 return westward to the capital of Persia. By Lybia our historian 

 means, in general, Africa, and the port where they landed, was 

 probably Arsinoe, situated on the extreme western point of the 

 Gulph, near which the modern Suez stands. This tedious, and, for 

 those days, hazardous, navigation, Scylax and his companions suc- 

 cessfully accomplished in the thirtieth month from its commence- 

 ment ; and, arriving at the court of Susa with the desired intelligence, 

 animated that monarch to attempt the conquest of the western re- 

 gion of India. This conquest, according to our historian, he after- 

 wards fortunately effected ; but he acquaints us with no farther par- 

 ticulars concerning it. In his third book, however, enumerating 

 the provinces subject to Persia, which, under Darius Hystaspes, are 

 said to have amounted to twenty in number, and the tribute derived 

 from them, India ranks as one of them, and the tribute of the newly- 

 conquered province is stated at four thousand six hundred and eighty 

 Euboic talents, amounting to nearly a third part of the whole re- 

 venue of his other dominions, which was fourteen thousand five 

 hundred and sixty Euboic talents, or ="2,807,437 sterlingf . The 

 Indian tribe, he tells us, was paid in gold, while that of all the 

 other satrapies was paid in silver. Herodotus is very particular in 

 relating this fact ; for, in one place, he expressly declares they paid 

 six hundred talents in golden ingots ; in another, that it was three 

 hundred and sixty talents of gold, the number of the days of the 

 ancient Persian year. The reason of the Indian tribute being paid 

 in gold rather than silver is properly assigned by Rennel, from the 

 Ayeen Akbery, that, " the eastern branches of the Indus, as well as 



* Herodotus, lib. iv. p. 270. t Ibid. lib. iii. p. 227. 



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