APPENDIX. 
xxxvn 
conclude, that vessels of a construction and size best adapted to the 
service of discovery and long voyages were chosen on occasions 
like the present.” 
In addition to the instances selected by Major Rennell, as proofs 
of the slow rate of sailing of the yessels of the ancients, we here 
submit a few examples of a contrary tendency ; and from these it 
will appear (if the numbers of Pliny may be relied upon), that navi- 
gation under the Romans had made rapid strides, and that voyages 
undertaken by the vessels of the empire must have been performed 
under other disadvantages than those resulting from a slow rate of 
sailing, when they are found to be so bad as those which we have 
instanced above. 
The Preefect Galerius is stated by Pliny (lib. xix, Proemium) 
to have employed no more than seven days in the voyage from 
Sicily to Alexandria ; and Rabilius is said, immediately afterwards, 
to have made the same voyage in six. 
We cannot reckon less than one thousand Roman miles for the 
distance between the Faro of Messina and Alexandria ; which per- 
formed in the space of seven days (as first mentioned), would give 
a rate of one hundred and forty-three M.P. per day ; and being 
reckoned at six (as in the latter instance), a rate of one hundred and 
fifty such miles. 
In the same place we find that Valerius Marianus accomplished 
the voyage from Puteoli to Alexandria in the space of nine days 
(lenissimo flatu), under the disadvantage of extremely light winds. 
This may be reckoned at two hundred and fifty M.P. more than the 
voyage above stated, or one thousand two hundred and fifty Roman 
miles ; and from it will be found to result a distance of nearly one 
hundred and forty M.P. per day— differing very little from the 
instance first mentioned, and much less from the latter than might 
reasonably be expected, from the circumstances under which it was 
performed. 
We also find, from what follows, in the passage alluded to, that 
the voyage from the Straits of Gibraltar to Ostia was accomplished 
