CIIAP. I.] IIIPPALUS. 555 



fluence, and departing from the coast of Arabia, he 

 stretched fearlessly across the unknown deep, and was 

 carried to Muziris, a port on the coast of Malabar, the 

 modern Mangalore. 



An exploit so adventurous and so triumphant, ren- 

 dered Hippalus the Columbus of his age, and his 

 countrymen, to perpetuate his renown, called the winds 

 which he had mastered by his name. 1 His discovery 

 gave a new direction to navigation, altered the di- 

 mensions and build of the ships frequenting those seas 2 , 

 and imparted so great an impulse to trade, that within 

 a very brief period it became a subject of apprehension 

 at Eome, lest the empire should be drained of its specie 

 to maintain the commerce with India ; silver to the 

 value of nearly a million and a half sterling, being 

 annually required to pay for the spices, gems, pearls, and 

 silks, imported through Egypt. 3 An extensive acquain- 

 tance was now acquired with the sea-coast of India, and 

 the great work of Pliny, compiled less than fifty years 

 after the discovery of Hippalus, serves to attest the ad- 

 ditional knowledge regarding Ceylon which had been 

 collected during the interval. 



Pliny, writing in the first century, puts aside the 

 fabulous tales previously circulated concerning the 

 island 4 ; he gives due credit to the truer accounts of 

 Onesicritus and Megasthenes, and refers to the later 



1 Periplus, fyc., HUDSON, p. 32 ; I tured, but without any justifiable 

 PLINY, lib. vi. ch. 26. A learned | grounds, to be laid in Ceylon ; and 

 disquisition on the discovery of the I which is strangely incorporated with 

 monsoons will be found in VIN- j the authentic work of DIODORUS 

 CENT'S Commerce of tJie Ancients, j SICFLTJS, written in the age of Au- 

 vol. i. pp. 47," 253 ; vol. ii. pp. 49, j gustus. DIODORUS professes to give 

 467 ; ROBERTSON'S India, sec. ii. ; it as an account of the recent dis- 



PLINY, lib. vi. ch. 24. 

 3 PLINY, lib. vi. ch. 26. The 

 nature of this rich trade is fully 

 described by the author of the Peri- 



covery of an island to which it refers ; 

 a fact sufficiently demonstrative of 

 its inapplicability to Ceylon, the ex- 

 istence of which had been known to 



pirn of the En/threan Sea, who was j the Greeks three hundred years be- 

 himself a merchant engaged in it. fore. It is the story of a merchant 



4 I have not thought it necessary 

 to advert to the romance of JAMBTTLTJS, 

 the scene of which has been conjee- 



made captive by pirates and carried 

 to /Ethiopia, where, in compliance 

 with a solemn rite, he and a com- 



o o 2 



