,558 



MEDLEVAL HISTORY. 



[PART V. 



ance of the soil, the profusion of all fruits except that 

 of the vine, the natural wealth of the inhabitants, the 

 mildness of the government, the absence of vexatious 

 laws, the happiness of the people, and the duration of 

 life, which was prolonged to more than one hundred 

 years. They spoke of a commerce with China, but it 

 was evidently overland, by way of India and Tartaiy, the 

 country of the Seres being visible, they said, beyond the 

 Himalaya mountains. 1 They described the mode of 

 trading among their own countrymen precisely as it is 

 practised by the Veddahs in Ceylon at the present 

 day 2 ; the parties to the barter being concealed from 

 each other, the one depositing the articles to be ex- 

 changed in a given place, and the other, if they agree 

 to the terms, removing them unseen, and leaving behind 

 what they give in return. 



It is impossible to read this narrative of Pliny without 

 being struck with its fidelity to truth in many particulars ; 

 and even one passage, to which exception has been taken 

 as an imposture of the Singhalese envoys, when they 

 manifested surprise at the quarters in which the sun rose 

 and set in Italy, has been referred 3 to the peculiar system 

 of the Hindus, in whose maps north and south are left 

 and right ; but it may be explained by the fact of the sun 

 passing over and to the north of Ceylon, in his transit to 

 the summer solstice ; instead of hanging about the south, 

 as in Italy. 



The rapid progress of navigation and discovery in 

 the Indian seas, within the interval of sixty or seventy 

 years which elapsed between the death of Pliny and 

 the compilation of the great work of Ptolemy is in no 

 instance more strikingly exhibited than on comparing 

 the information concerning Taprobane, which is given 

 by the latter in his " System of Geography," 4 with the 



1 " Ultra montes Emodos Seras 

 quoque ab ipsis aspici notos etiam 

 commercio." PLTNY, lib. vi. c. 24. 



2 See the chapter on the Veddahs, 

 Vol. II. Part II. ch. iii. 



3 See WILFORD'S Sacred Inland* 

 of the West, Asiat. Res., vol. x. p. 



4 PXOLEMT, Geoff., lib. vii. c. 4, tab. 

 xii. Asise. In one important parti- 



