198 ON THE ANCIENT GEOGRAPHY 



menced a laborious journey to that capital, which could not be 

 performed in less than seven months. Admitting, with Ptole- 

 my, that a large allowance is to be made for the delays and dif- 

 ficulties of the journey, and perhaps for some degree of wanton 

 and boastful exaggeration, there will remain enough to carry 

 them nearly to the extremity of Asia; and it will remain quite 

 unaccountable, how any period approaching to the above, could 

 be spent in travelling to a place which could not be farther 

 distant than five or six hundred miles. 



If the distance and direction correspond thus ill, the descrip- 

 tion is, if possible, still more discordant, So far was Ptolemy 

 from the remotest idea of Sera being in India, or near the 

 Ganges, that he fixes it about forty degrees, nearly half the 

 length of Asia, east from that river. The most profound igno- 

 rance of this quarter of India would be necessary to account 

 for so unheard of an error. On the contrary, we have found 

 this region, which gives rise to the Ganges and its tributaries, 

 to be one of those in which Ptolemy has displayed the most 

 decided superiority to modern information. In representing 

 the heads of the Ganges by the rivers of Serica, Ptolemy 

 would have committed a very extraordinary error indeed ; for 

 these run south-west, while the others are made to run north- 

 east ; a change of direction quite unheard of. With regard to 

 the sieooTaphical relations of Serica, it is needless to mention 

 them, as it is evident that all these, by the present system, 

 must be entirely thrown up. 



This system, like the other, rests solely, I apprehend, upon 

 nominal arguments. Some writers mention Serinda, or India 

 Serica, a country in the north of Indostan, which actually pro- 

 duced silk, the staple of Serica. What is more, there are two, 

 Stephen of Byzantium, and the anonymous geographer of Ra- 

 venna, who appear to consider this as the Serica, and the Seres 



as 



