Remarks on the Voyage and Periplus of Scylax. 179 
to Delhi. It would be strange, indeed, if Darius knew not the 
route from his own dominions to the Indus; and it is difficult to 
see how the voyage of Scylax could facilitate his conquest of India. 
It is said further, that he sailed down the Indus eastward to the 
sea, which is impossible, as the river runs 8. W. the whole way, 
and the mouth is at least 5 degrees W. of Attock. We are further 
told, that he altered his course to the westward, after leaving the 
embouchure of the river, agreeably to his orders, and thus returned 
to Persia. One would imagine from this, that his orders were to 
steer to the W. along the shore of the Indian Ocean, and then en- 
ter the Persian Gulf, instead of sailing S. E. along the gulfs of 
Cutch and Cambay. But instead of this, we find him sailing bold- 
ly across the Indian Ocean, in a 8. W. course from the mouth of 
the Indus, to Cape Ras-al-Ghat in Arabia, and then coasting the 
whole S. E. coast of the Arabian peninsula, till he entered the Red 
Sea at the Straits of Bab-al-mandab, and then coasted the whole 
S. W. side of the same peninsula, till he arrived at Suez. After 
this, says Herodotus, Darius subdued the Indians, and became 
master of all that sea. What sear Not that which washes the 
shore of India either to the W. or to the E. of the mouth of the 
Indus, for that coast Scylax it seems never visited ; but that which 
washes the S. E. coast of Arabia and the Red Sea. 
Now, what visible connection has this voyage with the conquest of 
India? I would think that Darius, by his conquest of India, became 
master of the whole sea-coast, from the Gulf of Cutch to the mouth 
of the Persian Gulf. I am inclined to suspect that Herodotus, from 
a misconception of his Persian informants, confounded the Red Sea 
with the Erythrzan Sea, or Sea of Omman, which extends W. from 
the Indus to Cape Mussendom, at the entrance of the Persian Gulf ; 
or rather that he confounded the Erythrean Sea and Persian Gulf 
with the Erythrean Sea and Arabian Gulf, and that. instead of 
conducting him, as he ought to have done, to the head of the Per- 
sian gulf, landed him at that of the Arabian Gulf. It is further 
said, that Scylax published a full and circumstantial account of his 
wonderful voyage, and dedicated the same to Darius. That per- 
formance, however, if really published, seems to have perished be- 
fore the time of Herodotus, as he never saw it, and his information 
respecting such a voyage was merely oral ; and as the Persians 
themselves were never a maritime people, their information, as con- 
veyed to Herodotus, was not likely to be very correct, It might 
be that Scylax was first sent as a traveller by Darius to India, to 
bring some account of its political state, in order that Darius might 
ascertain the practicability of its conquest, or it might be that, after 
Darius had conquered the country on both sides of the Indus, a fact 
indisputably certain, that Scylax, under Persian orders and Per- 
sian protection, sailed down the Indus in order to ascertain where 
it entered the sea, and then returned, by way of the Erythrzan 
Sea and Persian Gulf, to Susa; but otherwise I strongly suspect 
se whole story, as it is told by Herodotus, for the reasons stated 
aDOVE, 
