EASTERN COMMERCE. 
519 
it solely in the hands of the Tyrians, who carried it regularly 
on from the banks of the Red Sea to their own great emporium. 
But when the Ptolemies built Berenice, Myos-Hormos, &c., on 
the Egyptian side of the Gulf, and fixed their dispensing mart 
at Alexandria, then the stream of commerce took that channel. 
And there it continued to flow, carrying with it all the riches of 
Persia, India, and Arabia, till little more than three hundred 
years ago; when Vasco de Gama discovered a passage by the 
Cape of Good Hope, and, like the sudden extinguishing of the 
naphtha flame at one part, to spring up in greater blaze at some 
new aperture, trade fled at once from the old tracks, to embark 
on the new seas of the Portuguese. That nation held it for 
some time ; but the same route being followed by the Dutch 
and the English, the indefatigable perseverance of the latter 
prevailed; and the “ greater glory indeed, dimming the less,” 
our East India Company may now be called “ the merchant 
princes” of that half of the world. It remains for time and 
enterprise to prove, whether the two seas of the Caspian and 
the Euxine, may not bring India nearer home to us, and by 
different hands. 
* 
His royal highness Abbas Mirza, returned to Tabreez early in 
March, to Be present at the Nowrooze in his own capital; which 
feast of rejoicing, though only a miniature here, of the gorgeous 
spectacle I had witnessed that time last year at Teheran, was 
yet celebrated with great splendour, and respect to all its cere¬ 
monies. One object of particular interest, was the presence of 
Alexander Mirza, the fourth son of Heraclius, the late Tzar of 
Georgia; a prince, whose bold independence of spirit still resists 
all terms of amity with Russia, not only having rejected every 
imperial honour offered to him, but openly declaring himself 
