OF THE UNIVERSE. CONQUESTS OP ALEXANDER. 155 



a passage through the snow, and where all arborescent 

 vegetation ceases ( 222 ). 



The dwellers in the west received through the 

 Macedonian settlements accurate accounts of Indian pro- 

 ductions of nature and of art, of which little more than 

 the names were previously known by reports derived 

 either through more ancient commercial connections, or 

 through Ctesias of Cnidos who had lived for seventeen 

 years at the Persian court as the physician of Artaxerxes 

 Mnemon. Such were the watered rice fields, of the 

 cultivation of which Aristobulus gave a particular account ; 

 the cotton shrub and the fine tissues and paper ( 223 ) 

 for which it furnished the materials; spices and opium; 

 wine made from rice, and from the juice of palms, the 

 Sanscrit name of which, tala, has been preserved by 

 Arrian ( 224 ) ; sugar from the sugar-cane ( 225 ), which, 

 indeed, is often confounded by the Greek and Eoman 

 writers with the Tabaschir of bamboo stems; wool from 

 the great Bombax tree? ( 226 ) ; shawls from the wool of the 

 Thibetian goat ; silken (Seric) tissues ( 227 ) ; oil of white 

 sesamum (Sanscrit, tila) ; oil of roses and Other perfumes ; 

 lac (Sanscrit, lakscha, and in the vulgar tongue, lakkha) 

 ( 228 ) ; and, lastly, the hardened Indian wootz steel. 



Besides the knowledge of these productions, which 

 soon became the objects of an extensive commerce, 

 and of which several were transplanted into Arabia by 

 the Seleucidre ( 229 ), the aspect of nature in these richly 

 adorned subtropical regions procured for the Greeks 

 enjoyments of a different kind. Gigantic forms of 

 plants and animals never before seen filled the imagina- 

 tion with excitin? imagery. Writers from whose severe 

 VOL. ii. M 



