52 
PLII^T^S NATURAL HISTORY. 
[Book VI. 
country is more productive of gold and pearls of great size than 
even India. Eratosthenes has also given the dimensions of 
this island, as being seven thousand stadia in length, and five 
thousand in breadth : he states also that there are no cities, but 
villages to the number of seven hundred. It begins at the 
Eastern sea, and lies extended bpposite to India, east and west. 
This island was in former times supposed to be twenty days' 
sail from the country of the Prasii,^* but in later times, where- 
as the navigation was formerly confined to vessels constructed 
of papyrus with the tackle peculiar to the Nile, the distance 
has been estimated at no more than seven days' sail, in re- 
ference to the speed which can be attained by vessels of our 
construction. The sea that lies between the island and the 
mainland is full of shallows, not more than six paces in depth ; 
- but in certain channels it is of such extraordinary depth, that no 
anchor has ever found a bottom. Eor this reason it is that the 
vessels are constructed with prows at either end ; so that there 
may be no necessity for tacking while navigating these channels, 
which are extremely narrow. The tonnage of these vessels is 
three thousand amphorae. In traversing their seas, the people 
.of Taprobane take no observations of the stars, and indeed the 
Greater Bear^^ is not visible to them ; but they carry birds out 
to sea, which they let go from time to time, and so follow their 
course as they make for the land. They devote only four 
months in the year to the pursuits of navigation, and are par- 
ticularly careful not to trust themselves on the sea during the 
next hundred days after our summer solstice, for in those seas 
it is at that time the middle of winter. 
JElian makes the villages to be 750 in number. 
9* A general term probably, as already stated, for the great peninsula of 
India, below the Ganges. 
This expression has been relied upon by those who do not admit that 
Ceylon is identical with the ancient Taprobana. But it is not improbable 
that the passage here referred to is from Cape Comorin to Ceylon, and not 
from Cape Ramanan Cor, the nearest part of the continent. In such case, 
the distance would be sixty-five or sixty-six leagues, and we can easily 
conceive that Greek vessels, sailing from nine to ten leagues per day, 
might occupy seven days in making the passage from Cape Comorin, past 
Ramanan Cor, to the coasts of Ceylon. 
®s The amphora, as a measure, contained eight congii, or forty-eight 
sextarii. 
9^ Or Septentrio " the Seven Trions," which was more especially 
employed by the nations of Europe for the purposes of navigation. 
