VOL. LVII.3 PHILOSOPHICAL TKANSACTIONS. *40Q 



mentions any discoveries to the east of these, taken notice of by him ; and Mar- 

 cianus Heracleota had such an opinion of his great merit, as to call him by the 

 name " of the most divine and most wise Ptolemy." 



By a retrospect on such authors as have been quoted, and some others who 

 wrote nearly at the same time, according to the order in which they lived, this 

 subject will still appear in a clearer light. In the days of Strabo, who lived be- 

 fore the Christian aera, and is supposed to have survived it 28 years, few people 

 had sailed so far as the Ganges; and being intimately acquainted with Gallus, 

 the 3d governor of Egypt, he had undoubtedly the most favourable opportunities 

 of the most authentic intelligence concerning naval affairs. 



Pomponius Mela is supposed to have written before Pliny, in the reign of 

 Claudius, and 30 years after Strabo. In that interval, there appears to have been 

 made some further discoveries on the continent to the east of the Ganges ; but 

 so very imperfect, that they either imagined that country was an island, or had 

 confounded their descriptions of it with those islands which they would neces- 

 sarily meet with in this voyage. For it is very certain from Mela's own words, 

 that his knowledge of these places we are speaking of was extremely obscure, as 

 all he has said of them is, " ad Tabim insula est Chrysa, ad Gangem Argyra, 

 alteri aurea soli, altera argentea; atque ut maxime videtur, aut ex re nomen, 

 aut ex vocabulo ficta fabula est." The elder Pliny died in the 79th of the 

 Christian aera, and was a contemporary of Mela; and seems to have referred to 

 the above passage, in the following words: " Extra ostium Indi Chryse et Argyre, 

 fertiles metallis, ut credo; nam quod aliqui tradidere, aureum argenteumque iis 

 solum esse, baud facile crediderim." 



Though the age in which Solinus lived is so uncertain, yet it might be ima- 

 gined that it was not very long after Pliny; having copied from the other geo~ 

 graphers which went before him, he has advanced nothing on this point that had 

 not been already mentioned. His words are these: " Extra Indi ostium insuls 

 duae, Chryse et Argyre, adeo foecundae copia metallorum, ut plerique eas aurea 

 sola prodiderint habere et argentea." 



Josephus was 56 years of age, in the 14th year of Domitian's reign, or 93d 

 of the Christian sera; and he appears to have had a little more knowledge of 

 these places than any we have yet mentioned ; for, speaking of Saphira, whence 

 king Solomon had his gold, he says, that " it was a country of India, and not 

 an island; and that it was now called by the name of Aurea." 



Dionysius is supposed to have lived after Domitian, and before Severus. He 

 wrote a description of the world in Greek verse, which it may be supposed he 

 had finished before the reign of Trajan, or at least that he had not heard of the 

 increase of geographical knowledge which took place at that time, for he was as 



VOL. XII. 3 G 



