OF CENTRAL AND EASTERN ASIA. 173 



Sinse were, either in whole or in part, the inhabitants of Mo- 

 dern China. But D'Anville, who largely reduced the world 

 of the ancients, fixed the Magnus Sinus in the Gulf of Siam, 

 and allowed only a limited navigation along the coast of Cam- 

 bodia. M. Gosselin, with bolder scepticism, fixes the Sinae 

 on the coast of Siam, and never allows the ancients to have 

 passed the Straits of Malacca. 



In comparing these three statements, there cannot, I appre- 

 hend, be the smallest hesitation in preferring the one last men- 

 tioned. There positively is, beyond India, no coast, besides 

 that of Siam, which has an ocean on the west. Ptolemy men- 

 tions no island of a magnitude which could at all correspond 

 to that of Sumatra. Even the Golden Chersonese, though it 

 may suggest at first sight the peninsula of Malacca, will, when 

 its details are examined, be found better to correspond to that 

 of Ava and Pegu. This solution having been acceded to by 

 Mr Pinkerton, by Dr Vincent, and by all the eminent geo- 

 graphers of the present age, its correctness may probably be 

 considered as a point finally decided. 



We proceed, then, to the question respecting the Seres, a 

 people who, by their mysterious remoteness, their wealth and 

 civilization, and the peculiarities of their national character, 

 excited an extraordinary interest in the ancient world. The 

 information of the Greeks and Romans respecting their terri- 

 tory, as well as a long series of intervening regions, was chiefly 

 derived from a great mercantile caravan, which, setting out 

 from the Bosphorus, traversed Asia from west to east, till it 

 arrived on the frontier of Serica. This communication does not 

 appear to have been formed, till about the first century, during 

 the most extended period of Roman power. Its object was to 

 supply that empire with the luxury of silk, the use of which, from 

 being a rare appendage of greatness, had become common to 



almost 



