G. Elliot Smith on Ancient Marinerf^ 47 



construction of these Portugese and Arab ships would have 

 revealed, to anyone who had cared to investigate the matter, 

 that in the distant past their structural designs must have been 

 derived from a common soui'ce. 



But even more surprising than the similarity of their 

 methods of shipbuilding was the identity of the aims of the two 

 fleets, for the ships of the Arabs were laden with gold and silver, 

 spices, precious stones and pearls, and these were the things for 

 which the Portugese were searching, the allurement which had 

 led them to brave the dangers of unknown seas and embark upon 

 the most hazardous of enterprises. 



The link between these European and Arab methods and 

 motives will be found if we throw our minds back to a time 

 fourteen centuries before Vasco da Gama. The "Periplus of 

 the Erythraean 8ea,'' written by some unknown Grreek sailor a 

 few years after the middle of the First Century B.C., describes 

 the details of the maritime trafficking at the beginning of the 

 Christian era.^ 



These seamen exploited the coasts not only of the Mediter. 

 ranean and Atlantic, but also of the Ked Sea and Indian Ocean, 

 the Azanian part of East Africa, Arabia, the Persian Gulf, India, 

 and Ceylon. They themselves, or other sailors with whom they 

 came into close trading relations, went farther East — to Burma, 

 the Malay Peninsula, Indonesia, Cambodia and China." 



Their ships and their motives for maritime trafficking were 

 the models both of the Portugese and the Arabs fourteen 

 centuries later. 



But such mai'itime exploits were by no means novel adven- 

 tures even in the First Century. On the walls of the famous 

 temple of the Egyptian Queen Hatshepsut at Thebes there is 



^ " The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, travel and trade in the Indian 

 Ocean, by a Merchant of the First Century," translated from the Greek 

 and annotated by Wilfred H. Schoff, New York, 1912. 



^For a detailed study of the early routes in the Far East see G. E. 

 Gerini's " Researches on Ptolemy's Geography of Eastern Asia," Asiatic 

 Society Monographs— No. 1, 1909. 



