A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels Volume Xviii Part 13

The reputation of his geography remained unshaken and undiminished during the middle ages, both in Arabia and Europe; and even now, the scientific language which he first employed, is constantly used, and the position of places ascertained by specifying their lat.i.tude and longitude.

It was not to be expected, however, that Ptolemy could accurately fix the longitude and lat.i.tude of places in the remoter parts of the then known world; his lat.i.tudes and longitudes are accordingly frequently erroneous, but especially the latter. This arose partly from his taking five hundred stadia for a degree of a great circle, and partly from the vague method of calculating distances, by the estimate of travellers and merchants, and the number of days employed in their journies by land, and voyages by sea. As he took seven hundred stadia for a degree of lat.i.tude, his errors in lat.i.tude are not so important; and though the lat.i.tude he a.s.signs to particular places is incorrect, yet the length of the globe, according to him, or the distance from the extreme points north and south, then known, is not far from the truth. Thus the lat.i.tude of Thule, according to Ptolemy, is 64 degrees north, and the parallel through the cinnamon country 16 24' south, that is, 80 24' on the whole, a difference from the truth of not more than six or seven degrees. It is remarked by D'Anville, and Dr.

Vincent coincides in the justice of the remark, that the grandest mistake in the geography of Ptolemy has led to the greatest discovery of modern times. Strabo had affirmed, that nothing obstructed the pa.s.sage from Spain to India by a westerly course, but the immensity of the Atlantic ocean; but, according to Ptolemy's errors in longitude, this ocean was lessened by sixty degrees; and as all the Portuguese navigators were acquainted with his work, as soon as it was resolved to attempt a pa.s.sage to India, the difficulty was, in their idea, lessened by sixty degrees; and when Columbus sailed from Spain, he calculated on sixty degrees less than the real distance from that country to India. Thus, to repeat the observation of D'Anville, the greatest of his errors proved eventually the efficient cause of the greatest discovery of the moderns.

Beside the peculiar merit of Ptolemy, which was perceived and acknowledged as soon as his work appeared, he possesses another excellence, which, as far as we know, was first pointed out and dwelt upon by Dr. Vincent.

According to him, Ptolemy, in his description of India, serves as the point of connection between the Macedonian orthography and the Sanscrit, dispersing light on both sides, and showing himself like a luminary in the centre. He seems indeed to have obtained the native appellations of the places in India, in a wonderful manner; and thus, by recording names which cannot be mistaken, he affords the means of ascertaining the country, even though he gives no particulars regarding it. We have applied this remark to India exclusively, but it might be extended to almost all the names of places that occur in Ptolemy, though, as respects India, his obtaining the native appellations is more striking and useful.

Having offered these general remarks on the excellencies and errors of Ptolemy, we shall next proceed to give a short and rapid sketch of his geographical knowledge respecting Europe, Asia, and Africa. On the north-east of Europe he gives an accurate description of the course of the Wolga; and further to the south, he lays down the course of the Tanais, much nearer what it really is than the course a.s.signed it by Strabo. He seems to have been acquainted with the southern sh.o.r.es of the Baltic from the western Dwina, or the Vistula, to the Cimbric Chersonesus: he also describes part of the present Livonia. The Chersonesus, however, he stretches two degrees too far to the north, and also gives it too great a bend to the east. He applies the name of Thule to a country situated to the north-east of Britain; if his usual error in longitude is rectified, the position he a.s.signs Thule would correspond with that of Norway. Such seem to have been the limits of his Europe, unless, perhaps, he had some vague idea of the south of Sweden.

He begins his geographical tables with the British isles; and here is one of his greatest errors. According to him, the north part of Britain stretches to the east, instead of to the north: the Mull of Galloway is the most northern promontory, and the land from it bends due east. The Western Islands run east and west, along the north sh.o.r.e of Ireland, the west being the true north point in them. He is, however, on the whole, pretty accurate in his location of the tribes which at that period inhabited Scotland.

Strabo had placed Ireland to the north of Britain, but in its true lat.i.tude. Ptolemy's map, which is the first geographical doc.u.ment of that island, represents it to the west of Britain, but five degrees further to the north than it actually is. He delineates its general shape, rivers, and promontories with tolerable accuracy, and some of his towns may be traced in their present appellations, as Dublin in Eblana. It has already been noticed that he was probably acquainted with the south of Sweden, and his four Scandinavian islands are evidently Zealand, Funen, Laland, and Falster. It is remarkable that his geography is more accurate almost in proportion as it recedes from the Mediterranean. The form which he a.s.signs to Italy is much farther removed from the truth than the form of most of the other European countries which he describes. His fundamental error in longitude led him to give to the Mediterranean Sea a much greater extent than it actually possesses. According to him, it occupies nearly sixty-five degrees; and it is a singular circ.u.mstance, as well as a decisive proof of the influence of his authority, as well of the slow progress of accurate and experimental geography, that his mensuration of this sea was reputed as exact till the reign of Louis XIV., when it was curtailed of nearly twenty-five degrees by observation.

The princ.i.p.al points in the geography of Asia, as given by Ptolemy, respect the coasts of India, the route to the Seres, and the Caspian sea. His delineation of India is equally erroneous with his delineation of the British Isles: according to him, it stretches in a right line from west to east, a little to the south of a line drawn between the Ganges and the Indus. He possessed, however, information respecting places in the farther peninsula of India, the locality of several of which, by comparing his names with the Sanscrit, may be traced with considerable certainty. He a.s.signs to the island of Ceylon a very erroneous locality, arising from his error respecting the form of India, and likewise an extent far exceeding the truth. He is the first author, however, who mentions the seven mouths of the Ganges. The route to the Seres, which he describes, has been already noticed: it is remarkable that the lat.i.tude which he a.s.signs to his Sera metropolis, is within little more than a degree of the lat.i.tude of Pekin, which, in the opinion of Dr. Vincent, is one of the most ill.u.s.trious approximations to truth that ancient geography affords. His description of Arabia is, on the whole, accurate; he has, however, greatly diminished the extent of the Arabian Gulf, and by at the same time increasing the size of the Persian, he has necessarily given an erroneous form to this part of Asia. The ancient opinion of Herodotus, that the Caspian was a sea by itself, unconnected with any other, which was overlooked or disbelieved by Strabo, Arrian, &c. was adopted by Ptolemy, but he erroneously describes it as if its greatest length was from east to west. The peninsula to which he gives the name of the Golden Chersonesus, and which is probably Malacca, he describes as stretching from north to south: to the east of it he places a great bay, and in the most distant part of it the station of Catigara.

Beyond this, he a.s.serts that the earth is utterly unknown, and that the land bends from this to the west, till it joins the promontory of Prasum in Africa, at which place this quarter of the world terminated to the south.

Hence it appears that he did not admit a communication between the Indian and Atlantic oceans, and that he believed the Erythrean sea to be a vast basin, entirely enclosed by the land.

Strabo and Pliny believed that Africa terminated under the torrid zone, and that the Atlantic and Indian oceans joined. Ptolemy, as we have just seen, rejected this idea, and following the opinion of Hipparchus, that the earth was not surrounded by the ocean, but that the ocean was divided into large basins, separated from each other by intervening land, maintained, that while the eastern coast of Africa at Cape Prasum united with the coast of Asia at the bay of the Golden Chersonesus, the western coast of Africa, after forming a great gulf, which he named Hespericus, extended between the east and south till it joined India. The promontory of Prasum was undoubtedly the limit of Ptolemy's knowledge of the east coast of Africa: the limit of his knowledge of the west coast is not so easily fixed: some suppose that it did not reach beyond the river Nun; while others, with more reason, extend it to the Gulf of St. Cyprian, because the Fortunate Islands, which he a.s.sumed as his first meridian, will carry his knowledge beyond the Nun; and because, at the Gulf of St. Cyprian, the coast turns suddenly and abruptly to the east, in such a manner as may be supposed to have led Ptolemy to believe that it stretched towards and joined the coast of India.

Of some of the interior parts of Africa Ptolemy possessed clear and accurate information; regarding others, he presents us with a ma.s.s of confused notions. He clearly points out the Niger, though he fixes its source in a wrong lat.i.tude. In the cities of Tucabath and Tagana, which he places on its banks, may perhaps be recognized Tombuctoo and Gana. The most striking defect in his geography of the interior of Africa is, that he does not allow sufficient extent to the great desert of Sahara, while the southern parts are too much expanded. He places the sources of the Nile, and the Mountains of the Moon in south lat.i.tude thirteen, instead of north lat.i.tude six or seven; but the error of lat.i.tude is not so remarkable and unaccountable as the very erroneous lat.i.tude which he a.s.signs to Cape Aromata, on a coast which was visited every year by merchants he must have seen at Alexandria. The most difficult point to explain in Ptolemy's central Africa is the river Gir, which he describes as equal in length to the Niger, and running in the same direction, till it loses itself in the same lake. What this river is, geographers have not agreed. It is mentioned by Claudian, as resembling the Nile in the abundance of its waters.

Agethimedorus, a geographer of the third century, regards it and the Niger as the same river.

What then was the amount of the knowledge of the ancients, as it existed among the Romans, in the height of their power, respecting the form, extent, and surface of the globe? If we view a map drawn up according to their ideas, we are immediately struck with the form they a.s.signed the world, and perceive with what propriety they called the extent of the world from east to west longitude or _length_, and the extent from north to south lat.i.tude, or _breadth_. In some maps, especially that drawn up from the celebrated Peutingerian Tables, which contain an itinerary of the whole Roman empire, thirty-five degrees of longitude occupy twenty-eight feet eight inches, whereas thirteen degrees of lat.i.tude are compressed within the s.p.a.ce of one foot. It is easy to conceive how it happened that too much s.p.a.ce is a.s.signed between places situated east and west of each other, as the lat.i.tude of a place is much more easily determined than its longitude. At the same time, as the routes of the Roman armies generally were from east to west, the countries lying in that direction were better known than those lying to the north and south, though the longitudes, and general s.p.a.ce a.s.signed the world, in the former deviation, were erroneous.

It was the opinion of most of the ancient geographers, that there was a southern continent or hemisphere, to correspond to and balance the northern; and this they formed by cutting off the great triangle to the south. The ancients also, while they curtailed those parts of the world with which they were unacquainted, extended the known parts.

The limit of the Roman geography of Europe to the north was the Baltic, beyond which they had some very imperfect and obscure notion of the south of Sweden, and perhaps of Norway. They were acquainted with the countries on the eastern boundary of Europe lying on the Danube and the Vistula, and the rivers Wolga and Tanais seem also to have been tolerably well known to them. Of the whole of the west of Europe they were well informed, with the exception of the general figure, and some part of the British isles.

With respect to Africa, the Romans seem to have been acquainted with one-third of it. The promontory of Prasum was the limit of their knowledge on the east coast: its limits on the western coast it is not so easy to fix. The western horn was the limit of the voyage of Hanno, which, according to some, is Cape Nun; and, according to others, Cape Three Points, in Guinea; and we have observed already, that the Gulf of St.

Cyprian was probably the limit of Ptolemy's knowledge. The coasts of Africa on the Mediterranean, and on the Red Sea, were of course well known to the Romans; and some points of their information respecting the interior were clear and accurate, but, as for these, they trusted almost entirely to the reports of merchants, they were as frequently erroneous.

The northern, north-western, north-eastern, and east parts of Asia were almost utterly unknown to the Romans; but they possessed tolerably accurate information regarding the whole hither peninsula of India, from the Indus to the Ganges, and some partial and unconnected notices of the farther peninsula and of China.

[5] The most probable opinion is, that they were made of fluat of lime, or Derbys.h.i.+re spar.

CHAPTER IV.

HISTORICAL SKETCH OF THE PROGRESS OF DISCOVERY AND OF COMMERCIAL ENTERPRISE, FROM THE TIME OF PTOLEMY TILL THE CLOSE OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.

Although the period, which the present chapter embraces, extends to thirteen centuries, yet, as it is by no means rich or fruitful either in discovery or commercial enterprise, it will not detain us long. The luxuries and wealth of the east, which, in all ages of the world and to all nations have been so fascinating, had, as we have already seen, drawn to them the interest and the enterprise of the Romans, in the height of their conquests; and towards the east, with few exceptions, discovery and commerce pointed, during the whole of the period which this chapter embraces. Yet, notwithstanding this powerful attraction, geography made comparatively little progress: the love of luxury did not benefit it nearly so much as the love of science. The geography of Ptolemy, and the description of Greece by Pausanias, are, as Malte Brun justly remarks, the last works in which the light of antiquity s.h.i.+nes on geography. We may further observe, that as circ.u.mstances directed the route to the east, during the middle ages, princ.i.p.ally through the central parts of Asia, the countries thus explored, or visited, were among the least interesting in this quarter of the globe, and those of which we possess, even at the present day, very obscure and imperfect information.

The nations to whom geography and commerce were most indebted, during the period which this chapter embraces, were the Arabians,--the Scandinavians, --under that appellation comprehending the nations on the Baltic and in the north of Germany,--and the Italian states. Before, however, we proceed to notice and record their contributions to geography, discovery, and commerce, it will be proper briefly to attend to a few circ.u.mstances connected with those subjects, which occurred between the age of Ptolemy and the utter decline of the Roman empire.

We have already alluded to the intercourse which was begun between Rome and China, during the reign of Marcus Antoninus, for the purpose of obtaining silk. Of the emba.s.sy which preceded and occasioned this commercial intercourse, we derive all our information from the Chinese historians. A second emba.s.sy seems to have been sent in the year A.D. 284, during the reign of Probus: that the object of this also was commercial there can be no doubt; but the particulars or the precise object in view, and the result which flowed from it, are not noticed by the Chinese historians. There can be no doubt, however, that these emba.s.sies contributed to extend the geography and commerce of the Romans towards the eastern districts of Asia.

Of the attention which some of the Roman emperors, during the decline of the empire, paid to commerce, we possess a few notices which deserve to be recorded. The emperor Pertinax, whose father was a manufacturer and seller of charcoal, and who, himself, for some time pursued the same occupation, at that period an extensive and profitable one, preserved and exercised, during his reign, that sense of the value of commerce which he had thus acquired. He abolished all the taxes laid by Commodus on the ports, harbours, and public roads, and gave up his privileges as emperor, especially in all those points where they were prejudicial to the freedom and extension of commerce. It may indeed be remarked, that the very few good or tolerable princes who, at this period, filled the government of Rome, displayed their wisdom as well as their goodness by encouraging trade. Alexander Severus granted peculiar privileges and immunities to foreign merchants who settled in Rome: he lowered the duties on merchandises; and divided all who followed trade, either on a large or small scale, into different companies, each of which seems to have preserved the liberty of choosing their own governor, and over each of whom persons were appointed, conversant in each particular branch of trade, whose duty it was to settle all disputes that might arise.

Soon after this period the commerce of Rome in one particular direction, and that a most important one, received a severe blow. The Goths, who had emigrated from the north of Germany to the banks of the Euxine, were allured to the "soft and wealthy provinces of Asia Minor, which produced all that could attract, and nothing that could resist a barbarian conqueror." It is on the occasion of this enterprise, that we first became acquainted with the maritime usages and practices of the Goths; a branch of whom, under the name of Scandinavians, we shall afterwards find contributed so much to the extension of geography and commerce. In order to transport their armies across the Euxine, they employed "slight flat-bottomed barks, framed of timber only, without the least mixture of iron, and occasionally covered with a shelving roof on the appearance of a tempest." Their first object of importance was the reduction of Pityus, which was provided with a commodious harbour, and was situated at the utmost limits of the Roman provinces. After the reduction of this place, they sailed round the eastern extremity of the Euxine, a distance of nearly three hundred miles, to the important commercial city of Trebizond. This they also reduced; and in it they found an immense booty, with which they filled a great fleet of s.h.i.+ps, that were lying in the port at the time of the capture. Their success encouraged and stimulated them to further enterprises against such of the commercial cities or rich coasts of the Roman empire, as lay within their grasp. In their second expedition, having increased their fleet by the capture of a number of fis.h.i.+ng vessels, near the mouths of the Borysthenes, the Niester, and the Danube, they plundered the cities of Bithynia. And in a third expedition, in which their force consisted of five hundred sail of s.h.i.+ps, each of which might contain from twenty-five to thirty men, they pa.s.sed the Bosphorus and the h.e.l.lespont, and ravaged Greece, and threatened Italy itself.

The extent to which some branches of trade were carried by the Romans about this time, may be deduced from what is related of Firmus, whose ruin was occasioned by endeavouring to exchange the security of a prosperous merchant for the imminent dangers of a Roman emperor. The commerce of Firmus seems princ.i.p.ally to have been directed to the east; and for carrying on this commerce, he settled himself at Alexandria in Egypt.

Boasting that he could maintain an army with the produce of paper and glue, both of which articles he manufactured very extensively, he persuaded the people of Egypt that he was able to deliver them from the Roman yoke, and actually had influence sufficient to prevent the usual supplies of corn from being s.h.i.+pped from Alexandria to Rome. His destruction was the consequence. As an instance of his wealth and luxury, Vopiscus relates that he had squares of gla.s.s fixed with bitumen in his house. The Roman commerce suffered considerably during the reign of Dioclesian by the revolt of Britain, under Carausius, who, by his skill and superiority, especially in naval affairs, which enabled him to defeat a powerful Roman fleet fitted out against him, obtained and secured his independence. Carausius was murdered by Alectus: against the latter the emperor Constantine sailed with a powerful fleet, and having effected a landing in Britain, Alectus was defeated and slain. This fleet requires to be particularly noticed from two considerations. In the first place, it sailed with a side wind, and when the weather was rather rough,--circ.u.mstances so unusual, if not unprecedented, that they were deemed worthy of an express and peculiar panegyric: and, secondly, this fleet was not equipped and ready for sea till after four years' preparation, whereas, in the first Punic war, "within sixty days after the first stroke of the axe had been given in the forest, a fleet of 160 galleys proudly rode at anchor in the sea."

Soon after this event, we are furnished with materials, from which we may judge of the comparative opulence, commerce, and s.h.i.+pping of the several countries which bordered on the Mediterranean. Constantine and Licinius were contending for the Roman empire; and as the contest mainly depended on superiority at sea, each exerted himself to the utmost to fit out a formidable and numerous fleet. Licinius was emperor of the east: his fleet consisted of 380 gallies, of three ranks of oars; eighty were furnished by Egypt, eighty by Phoenicia, sixty by Ionia and Doria, thirty by Cyprus, twenty by Caria, thirty by Bithynia, and fifty by Africa. At this period there seems to have been no vessels larger than triremes. The naval preparations of Constantine were in every respect inferior to those of his rival: he seems to have got no s.h.i.+ps from Italy: indeed, the fleets which Augustus had ordered to be permanently kept up at Misenum and Ravenna, were no longer in existence. Greece supplied the most if not all Constantine's vessels: the maritime cities of this country sent their respective quotas to the Piraeus; and their united forces only amounted to 200 small vessels.

This was a feeble armament compared with the numerous and powerful fleets that Athens equipped and maintained during the Peloponnesian war. While this republic was mistress of the sea, her fleet consisted of 300, and afterwards of 400 gallies, of three ranks of oars, all ready, in every respect, for immediate service. The scene of the naval battle between Licinius and Constantine was in the vicinity of Byzantium: as this city was in possession of the former, Constantine gave positive orders to force the pa.s.sage of the h.e.l.lespont: the battle lasted two days, and terminated in the complete defeat of Licinius. Shortly after this decisive victory, the Roman world was again united under one emperor, and the imperial residence and seat of government was fixed by Constantine at Byzantium, which thenceforth obtained the name of Constantinople.

In the middle of the fourth century Ammia.n.u.s Marcellinus gives us some important and curious information respecting the Roman commerce with the East. According to him it was customary to hold an annual fair at Batnae, a town to the east of Antioch, not far from the banks of the Euphrates.

Merchandize from the East was brought hither overland by caravans, as well as up the Euphrates; and its value at this fair was so great, that the Persians made an attempt to plunder it. To the same author we are indebted for some notices respecting the countries which lay beyond the eastern limits of the Roman empire, and also for the first clear and undoubted notice of rhubarb, as an extensive article of commerce for medicinal purposes.

Towards the end of the fourth century, the naval expeditions of the Saxons attracted the notice and excited the fears of the Britons and the Gauls: their vessels apparently were unfit for a long voyage, or for encountering either the dangers of the sea or of battle; they were flat-bottomed and slightly constructed of timber, wicker-work, and hides; but such vessels possessed advantages, which to the Saxons more than compensated for their defects: they drew so little water that they could proceed 100 miles up the great rivers; and they could easily and conveniently be carried on waggons from one river to another.

We have already noticed the itineraries of the Roman empire: of these there were two kinds, the _annotota_ and the _picta_; the first containing merely the names of places; the other, besides the names, the extent of the different provinces, the number of their inhabitants, the names of the mountains, rivers, seas, &c.; of the first kind, the itinerary of Antoninus is the most celebrated: to it we have already alluded: to the second kind belong the Peutingarian tables, which are supposed to have been drawn up in the reign of Theodosius, about the beginning of the fifth century, though according to other conjectures, they were constructed at different periods.

The beginning of the tables is lost, comprising Portugal, Spain, and the west part of Africa; only the south-east coast of England is inserted.

Towards the east, the Seres, the mouth of the Ganges, and the island of Ceylon appear, and routes are traced through the heart of India. Dr.

Vincent remarks, that it is a very singular circ.u.mstance that these tables should have the same names in the coast of India as the Periplus, but reversed. Mention is also made in them of a temple of Augustus or the Roman emperor: these circ.u.mstances, Dr. Vincent justly observes, tend to prove the continuance of the commerce by sea with India, from the time of Claudius to Theodosius; a period of above 300 years. In these tables very few of the countries are set down according to their real position, their respective limits, or their actual size.

The law of the emperor Theodosius, by which he prohibited his subjects, under pain of death, from teaching the art of s.h.i.+p-building to the barbarians, was ineffectual in the attainment of the object which he had in view; nor did any real service to the empire result from a fleet of 1100 large s.h.i.+ps that he fitted out, to act in conjunction with the forces of the western empire for the protection of Rome against Genseric, king of the Vandals. This fleet arrived in Sicily, but performed nothing; and Genseric, notwithstanding the law of Theodosius, obtained the means and the skill of fitting out a formidable fleet. The Vandal empire in Africa was peculiarly adapted to maritime enterprise, as it stretched along the coast of the Mediterranean above ninety days' journey from Tangier to Tripoli: the woods of mount Atlas supplied an inexhaustible quant.i.ty of s.h.i.+p timber; the African nations whom he had subdued, especially the Carthaginians, were skilled in s.h.i.+p-building and in maritime affairs; and they eagerly obeyed the call of their new sovereign, when he held out to them the plunder of Rome. Thus, as Gibbon observes, after an interval of six centuries, the fleets that issued from the port of Carthage again claimed the empire of the Mediterranean. A feeble and ineffectual resistance was opposed to the Vandal sovereign, who succeeded in his grand enterprise, plundered Rome, and landed safely in Carthage with his rich spoils. The emperor Leo, alarmed at this success, fitted out a fleet of 1113 s.h.i.+ps, at the expense, it is calculated, of nearly five millions sterling. This fleet, with an immense army on board, sailed from Constantinople to Carthage, but it effected nothing. Genseric, taking advantage of a favourable wind, manned his largest s.h.i.+ps with his bravest and most skilful sailors; and they towed after them vessels filled with combustible materials. During the night they advanced against the imperial fleet, which was taken by surprise; confusion ensued, many of the imperial s.h.i.+ps were destroyed, and the remainder saved themselves by flight. Genseric thus became master of the Mediterranean; and the coasts of Asia, Greece, and Italy, were exposed to his depredations.

Towards the end of the fifth century, the Romans under Theodoric exhibited some slight and temporary symptoms of reviving commerce. His first object was to fit out a fleet of 1000 small vessels, to protect the coast of Italy from the incursions of the African Vandals and the inhabitants of the Eastern empire. And as Rome could no longer draw her supplies of corn from Egypt, he reclaimed and brought into cultivation the Pomptine marshes and other neglected parts of Italy. The rich productions of Lucania, and the adjacent provinces, were exchanged at the Marcilian fountain, in a populous fair, annually dedicated to trade: the gradual descent of the hills was covered with a triple plantation of divers vines and chestnut trees. The iron mines of Dalmatia, and a gold mine in Bruttium, were carefully explored and wrought. The abundance of the necessaries of life was so very great, that a gallon of wine was sometimes sold in Italy for less than three farthings, and a quarter of wheat at about five s.h.i.+llings and sixpence. Towards a country thus wisely governed, and rich and fertile, commerce was naturally attracted; and it was encouraged and protected by Theodoric: he established a free intercourse among all the provinces by sea and land: the city gates were never shut; and it was a common saying, "that a purse of gold might safely be left in the field." About this period, many rich Jews fixed their residence in the princ.i.p.al cities of Italy, for the purposes of trade and commerce.

The most particular information we possess respecting the geographical knowledge, and the Indian commerce of the ancients at the beginning of the sixth century, is derived from a work of Cosmas, surnamed Indico Pleustes, or the Indian navigator. He was originally a merchant, and afterwards became a monk; and Gibbon justly observes, that his work displays the knowledge of a merchant, with the prejudices of a monk. It is ent.i.tled _Christian Topography_, and was composed at Alexandria, in the middle of the fifth century, about twenty years after he had performed his voyage.

The chief object of his work was to confute the opinions that the earth was a globe, and that there was a temperate zone on the south of the torrid zone. According to Cosmas, the earth is a vast plane surrounded by a wall: its extent 400 days' journey from east to west, and half as much from north to south. On the wall which bounded the earth, the firmament was supported.

The succession of day and night is occasioned by an immense mountain on the north of the earth, intercepting the light of the sun. In order to account for the course of the rivers, he supposed that the plane of the earth declined from north to south: hence the Euphrates, Tigris, &c. running to the south, were rapid streams; whereas the Nile, running in a contrary direction, was slow and sluggish. The prejudices of a monk, are sufficiently evident in these opinions; but, in justice to Cosmas, it must be remarked, that he labours hard, and not unsuccessfully, to prove that his notions were all the same as those of the most ancient Greek philosophers; and, indeed, his system differs from that of Homer, princ.i.p.ally in his a.s.signing a square instead of a round figure to the plane surface, which they both supposed to belong to the earth. The cosmography of Homer, thus adopted by Cosmas and most Christian writers, modified in some respects by the cosmography they drew from the Scriptures, is a strong proof, as Malte Brun observes, of the powerful influence which the poetical geography of Homer possessed over the opinions even of very distant ages.

Having thus briefly detailed those parts of Cosmas's work, which are merely curious as letting us into the prevalent cosmography of his time, we shall now proceed to those parts which, as Gibbon remarks, display the knowledge of a merchant.

We have already noticed the inscription at Aduli for which we are indebted to this author, and the light which it throws on the commercial enterprise of the Egyptian sovereigns. According to Cosmas, the oriental commerce of the Red Sea, in his time, had entirely left the Roman dominions, and settled at Aduli: this place was regularly visited by merchants from Alexandria and Aela, an Arabian port, at the head of the eastern branch of the Red Sea. From Aduli, vessels regularly sailed to the East: here were collected the aromatics, spices, ivory, emeralds, &c. of Ethiopia, and s.h.i.+pped by the merchants of the place in their own vessels to India, Persia, South Arabia, and through Egypt and the north of Arabia, for Rome.

Cosmas was evidently personally acquainted with the west coast of the Indian peninsula. He enumerates the princ.i.p.al ports, especially those from which pepper was s.h.i.+pped. This article he describes as a source of great traffic and wealth. The great island of Sielidiba, or Ceylon, was the mart of the commerce of the Indian ocean. Its ports were visited by vessels from Persia, India, Ethiopia, South Arabia, and Tzinitza. If the last country is China, of which there can be little doubt, as he mentions that the Tzinitzae brought to Ceylon silk, aloes, cloves, and sandal-wood, and expressly adds that their country produced silk,--Cosmas is the first author who fully a.s.serts the intercourse by sea between India and China.

Besides the foreign vessels which frequented the ports of Ceylon, the native merchants carried on an extensive trade in their own vessels, and on their own account. In addition to pepper from Mali on the coast of Malabar, and the articles already enumerated from China, &c., copper, a wood resembling ebony, and a variety of stuffs, were imported from Calliena, a port shut to the Egyptian Greeks at the time of the Periplus; and from Sindu they imported musk, castoreum, and spikenard. Ceylon was a depot for all these articles, which were exported, together with spiceries, and the precious stones for which this island was famous.

Cosmas expressly states that he was not in Ceylon himself, but that he derived his information respecting it and its trade from Sopatrus, a Greek, who died about the beginning of the sixth century. This, as Dr. Vincent observes, is a date of some importance: for it proves that the trade opened by the Romans from Egypt to India direct, continued upon the same footing from the reign of Claudius and the discovery of Hippalus, down to A.D.

500; by which means we came within 350 years of the Arabian voyage published by Renaudot, and have but a small interval between the limit of ancient geography and that of the moderns.

From this author we first learn that the Persians having overcome the aversion of their ancestors to maritime enterprise, had established a flouris.h.i.+ng and lucrative commerce with India. All its princ.i.p.al ports were visited by Persian merchants; and in most of the cities there were churches in which the service was performed by priests, ordained by a Persian archbishop.

We shall conclude our notice of Ceylon, as described by Cosmas, from the account of Sopatrus, with mentioning a few miscellaneous particulars, ill.u.s.trative of the produce and commerce of the island. The sovereignty was held by two kings; one called the king of the Hyacinth, or the district above the Ghants, where the precious stones were found; the other possessed the maritime districts. In Ceylon, elephants are sold by their height; and he adds, that in India they are trained for war, whereas, in Africa, they are taken only for their ivory. Various particulars respecting the natural history of Ceylon and India, &c. are given, which are very accurate and complete: the cocoa-nut with its properties is described: the pepper plant, the buffalo, the camelopard, the musk animal, &c.: the rhinoceros, he says, he saw only at a distance; he procured some teeth of the hippopotamus, but never saw the animal itself. In the palace of the king of Abyssinia, the unicorn was represented in bra.s.s, but he never saw it. It is extraordinary that he makes no mention of cinnamon, as a production of Ceylon.

The most important points respecting the state of Eastern commerce in the age of Cosmas, as established by his information, are the following: that Ceylon was the central mart between the commerce of Europe, Africa, and the west of India, and the east of India and China; that none of the foreign merchants who visited Ceylon were accustomed to proceed to the eastern regions of Asia, but received their silks, spices, &c. as they were imported into Ceylon; and that, as cloves are particularly specified as having been imported into Ceylon from China, the Chinese at this period must have traded with the Moluccas on the one hand, and with Ceylon on the other.

Cosmas notices the great abundance of silk in Persia, which he attributes to the short land carriage between it and China.

In our account of the very early trade of Carthage, a branch of it was described from Herodotus, which the Carthaginians carried on, without the use or intervention of words, with a remote African tribe. Of a trade conducted in a similar manner, Cosmas gives us some information; according to him, the king of the Axumites, on the east coast of Africa, exchanged iron, salt, and cattle, for pieces of gold with an inland nation, whom he describes as inhabiting Ethiopia. It may be remarked in confirmation of the accuracy, both of Herodotus and of Cosmas, in what they relate on this subject, and as an ill.u.s.tration and proof of the permanency and power of custom among barbarous nations, that Dr. Shaw and Cadamosto (in Purchas's Pilgrimage) describe the same mode of traffic as carried on in their times by the Moors on the west coast of Africa, with the inhabitants of the banks of the Niger.

In the middle of the sixth century, an immense and expensive fleet, fitted out by the Emperor Justinian for the purpose of invading the Vandals of Africa, gives us, in the detail of its preparation and exploits, considerable insight into the maritime state of the empire at this period.

Justinian a.s.sembled at Constantinople 500 transports of various sizes, which it is not easy exactly to calculate; the presumption derived from the accounts we have is, that the smallest were 30 tons, and the largest 500 tons; and that the aggregate tonnage of the whole amounted to about 100,000 tons: an immense fleet, even compared with the fleets of modern times. On board of this fleet there were 35,000 seamen and soldiers, and 5000 horses, besides arms, engines, stores, and an adequate supply of water and provisions, for a period, probably, of two or three months. Such were the transports: they were accompanied and protected by 92 light brigantines, for gallies were no longer used in the Mediterranean; on board of these vessels were 2000 rowers. The celebrated Belisarius was the commander-in-chief, both of the land and sea forces. The course of this numerous and formidable fleet was directed by the master-galley in which he sailed; this was conspicuous by the redness of its sails during the day, and by torches fixed on its mast head during night. A circ.u.mstance occurred during the first part of the voyage, which instructs us respecting the mode of manufacturing the bread used on long voyages. When the sacks which contained it were opened, it was found to be soft and unfit for use; and on enquiring into the cause, the blame was clearly traced to the person by whose orders it had been prepared. In order to save the expense of fuel, he had ordered it to be baked by the same fire which warmed the baths of Constantinople, instead of baking it twice in an oven, as was the usual and proper practice. In the latter mode, a loss of one-fourth was calculated on and allowed; and the saving occasioned by the mode adopted was probably another motive with the person under whose superintendence the bread was prepared.