24 THE DISCOVERY OF AUSTRALIA 



races they traded, and with all of them they talked ; and 

 it would again be surprising if nothing were said of the 

 desolate coast line to the far South, to which, according 

 to our reasonable conjecture, Malay prows had been 

 blown by some North- West monsoon, and from which, 

 likely enough, they may have brought away a store of 

 sea-cucumbers, acceptable to civilized palates in the nations 

 of Asia. 



Moreover, these civilized nations traded to the Malay 

 islands, and especially to Java, " the Clapham Junction," 

 writes Mr. Macmillan Brown, " of ancient Oriental trade 

 routes." Let us notice the importance of this point more 

 exactly. We are to observe that the Malay islands, the 

 seamen of which probably had some slight and disre- 

 spectful acquaintance with the coast of Australia, were 

 themselves well within the scope of the regular system 

 of Asiatic commerce, in permanent touch with great 

 Oriental civilizations which existed in days before the 

 names of Athens and Rome had been heard, and which 

 still existed in those days of the young Renaissance, when 

 Europeans, following the beacon lit by Marco Polo, found 

 the long way to Australasian seas. 

 Indian " For three centuries," writes Professor Mookerji, 1 



Sttled'in 5 " India St d Out as the Vei ~y heart f the ld world 

 Java. and maintained her position as one of the foremost mari- 

 time countries. 2 She had colonies in Pegu, in Cambodia, 

 in Java, in Sumatra, in Borneo, and even in the countries 

 of the Further East, as far as Japan. She had trading 

 settlements in South China, in the Malayan Peninsula, 

 in Arabia, and in all the chief cities of Persia, and all 

 over the East coast of Africa." Buddhism was dominant 

 in India from about 250 B.C. to about 700 A.D. ; and 

 Buddhism, writes Sir William Hunter, was " a religion 

 of enterprise both mercantile and missionary." 

 " During the first few centuries of the Christian era an 

 enthusiastic band of devoted Bengalis, burning with a 



1 Mookerji, p. 4. 



2 Cf. Rawlinson's India and the Western World, p. 138. 

 8 Hunter, vol. i. p. 44. 



