472 THE INDIAN OCEAN. 



between the Euphrates and the Nile. A caravan route 

 was also opened between Babylon and India via Bok- 

 hara or Balkh and Samarcand. India possessed much 

 wealth in precious stones, but the true resources of 

 that country were its vegetable products and the skilful 

 manufactures of the natives. India, to use their own 

 expression, sells grass for gold. From one kind of 

 plant they extracted a beautiful blue dye ; from another 

 they boiled a juice, which cooled into a crystal, deli- 

 cate and luscious to the taste ; from another they ob- 

 tained a kind of wool, which they spun, wove, bleached, 

 glazed, and dyed into fabrics transparent as the gos- 

 samer, bright as the plumage of the jungle birds. And 

 India was also the half way station between China, 

 Ceylon, and the Spice Islands on the one hand, and of 

 the countries of Western Asia on the other. It was 

 enriched not only by its own industry and produce, 

 but by the transit trade as well. At an early epoch 

 in history, the Chinese became a great navigating 

 people ; they discovered America, at least, so they say ; 

 they freighted their junks with cargoes of the shining 

 fibre, and with musk in porcelain jars ; they coasted 

 along the shores of the Pacific, established colonies in 

 Birmah and Siam, developed the spice trade of the 

 Indian Archipelago, and the resources of Ceylon, sailed 

 up the shores of Malabar, entered the Persian gulf, 

 and even coasted as far as Aden and the Red Sea. It 

 was probably from them that the Banians of Guzerat and 

 the Arabs of Yemen acquired the arts of shipbuilding 

 and navigation. The Indian Ocean became a basin of 

 commerce; it was whitened by cotton sails. The Phoeni- 

 cians explored the desolate waters of the Mediterranean 

 Sea ; with the bright red cloth, and the blue bugles, 

 and the speckled beads, they tempted . the savages 



