Chap. 23.] 
ACCOUNT OE COrj^TRIES, ETC. 
63 
aid of a westerly wind, which is there known by the name 
of Hippalus. 
The age that followed pointed out a shorter route, and a 
safer one, to those who might happen to sail from the same 
promontory for Sigerus, a port of India ; and for a long time 
this route was followed, until at last a still shorter cut was 
discovered by a merchant, and the thirst for gain brought 
India even still nearer to us. At the present day voyages are 
made to India every year : and companies of archers are carried 
on board the vessels, as those seas are greatly infested with 
pirates. 
It will not be amiss too, on the present occasion, to set forth 
the whole of the route from Egypt, which has been stated to 
us of late, upon information on which reliance maybe placed, 
and is here published for the first time. The subject is one well 
worthy of our notice, seeing that in no year does India drain 
our empire of less than five hundred and fifty millions of 
sesterces, giving back her own wares in exchange, which are 
sold among us at fully one hundred times their prime cost. 
Two miles distant from Alexandria is the town of Juliopolis.^^ 
The distance thence to Coptos, up the Mle, is three hundred 
and eight miles ; the voyage is performed, when the Etesian 
winds are blowing, in twelve days. From Coptos the journey 
is made with the aid of camels, stations being arranged at 
intervals for the supply of fresh water. The first of these 
stations is called Hydreuma,^^ and is distant twenty- two 
miles ; the second is situate on a mountain, at a distance of one 
day's journey from the last ; the third is at a second Hydreuma, 
65 35,000,000 francs, according to Ansart, which would amount to 
£1,400,000 of our money. 
6^ Pliny is the only writer that mentions this place among the towns of 
Lower Egypt. Some suppose it to have been Nicopolis, or the City of 
Victory, founded by Augustus e.g. 29, partly to commemorate the reduc- 
tion of Egypt to a Eoman province, and partly to punish the Alexandrians 
for their adhesion to the cause of Antony and Cleopatra. Mannert, how- 
ever, looks upon it as having heen merely that suburb of Alexandria which 
Strabo (B. xvii.) calls Eleusis. 
^7 From the Greek vSpevixa, a "watering-place." 
From Coptos, the modern Kouft or Keh. Ptolemy Philadelphus, 
when he constructed the port of Berenice, erected several caravansaries or 
•watering-places between the new city and Coptos. Coptos was greatly 
enriched by the commerce between Lybia and Egypt on the one hand, and 
Arabia and India on the other. 
