Anonymous

“ For in one hour so great riches is come to nought. And every shipmaster, and all the company in ships, and sailors, and as many as trade by sea, stood afar off, and cried when they saw the smoke of her burning, saying, What city is like unto this great city! ”

“ The modern world takes its little supply of frankincense from the Arab vessels that carry it to Bombay or Aden; its armies are sent to the conquest or defence of lands in other lines of productivity—of a Kimberley, a Witwatersrand, a Manchuria. But to the ancient world the Incense-Land was a true Eldorado, sought by the empires and fought for by every Arab tribe that managed to enrich itself by trading incense for temple-service on the Nile or Euphrates, on Mount Zion, or in Persia, India, or China. ”

“ Money was plentiful and merchants flocked thither from all quarters. Within a generation the center of exchanges of the Mediterranean was moved from Alexandria to Rome. But a wise decision of the Emperor Augustus, only once departed from and that disastrously, limited the Roman dominion to the bank of the Euphrates; so that all this rich trade that flowed to Rome paid its tolls to the Empire of Parthia and to the Arab kingdoms, unless Rome could develop and control a sea-borne trade to India. ”

“ The Greek colonies, planted at the terminus of every trade-route, gained for themselves a measure of commercial independence; but never until the overthrow of the East by the great Alexander was the control of the great overland caravan-routes threatened by a western people, and his early death led to no more than a readjustment of conditions as they had always existed. ”

“ As the current of trade gradually flowed beyond the Nile and Euphrates to the peoples of the north, and their curiosity began to trace the better things toward their source in India, new trade-routes were gradually opened. The story of the world for many centuries was that of the struggles of the nations upon the Nile and the Euphrates to win all the territory through which the new routes passed, and so to prevent the northern barbarians from trading with others than themselves. ”

“ An enterprising and uncompromising people, these Chatramotitae, who may have been the active power in the Minaean dynasty and the Sabaean that followed it, both of whom subsisted mainly on the carriage of frankincense to the north, in which they were the mediators between the profane world and the unpolluted caste of those who were able by propitiating the spirit of the sacred tree, to shed and gather its blood for the purification of mankind. ”

“ Against such an enterprise all the energy and subtlety of the Arab was called into action. No information was allowed to reach the merchants in Egypt, and every device the imagination could create was directed toward discouraging the least disturbance of the channels of trade that had existed since human memory began. And in an unknown ocean, with only the vaguest ideas of the sources of the products they sought, and the routes that led to them, it might been many years before a Roman vessel, coasting along hostile shores, could reach the goal. But accidents favored Roman ambition. ”

“ The trade-routes leading to that center were the old routes through Mesopotamia, where a revivified power under the Sassanids was able to conquer every passage to the East, including even the proud Arab states which had not yielded submission to Hammurabi or Esarhaddon, Nebuchadrezzar or Darius the Great. Egypt, no longer in the highway of commerce, became a mere granary for Constantinople, and Abyssinia, driven from its hard-won footholds east of the Red Sea, could offer the Byzantine emperors no effective aid in checking the revival of Eastern power. ”

“ No crafter larger than a canoe can ride near Zeila. After bumping once or twice against the coral reefs, it was considered advisable for our ship to anchor. My companions put me into a cockboat, and wading through the water, shoved it to shore. The situation is a low and level spit of sand, which high tides make almost an island. There is no harbor; a vessel of 250 tons cannot approach within a mile of the landing-place; the open roadstead is exposed to the terrible north wind, and when gales blow from the west and south it is almost unapproachable. ”

“ In the early Roman Empire vast quantities of wheat were raised in Sicily, Gaul, North Africa, and particularly Egypt, for shipment to Rome. Later a great wheat area was opened up in what is now Southern Russia, which finally supplanted Egypt in the markets of Constantinople, after Alexandria and Antioch fell into Saracen hands. The trade in wheat as described in the Periplus is interesting. It shows that South Arabia, Socotra and East Africa had wheat not only from Egypt but also from India, which has not usually been considered as a wheat country at that time. ”

“ If this view is correct, India was the most populous region of the world at the time of the Periplus, as it was the most cultivated, the most active industrially and com- mercially, the richest in natural resources and production, the most highly organized socially, the most wretched in the poverty of its teeming millions, and the least powerful politically.
The great powers of India were the Kushan in the far northwest, the Saka in the Cambay country, the remains of the Maurya in the Ganges watershed, the Andhra in the Deccan, and the Chera, Pandya and Chola in the South. ”

“ The merchants of these things, which were made rich by her, shall stand afar off for the fear of her torment, weeping and wailing, and saying, Alas, alas, that great city, that was clothed in fine linen, and purple, and scarlet, and decked with gold, and precious stones, and pearls! ”

“ Not until the coming of those vast changes in industry and transportation which marked the nineteenth century did the Western nations find commodities of which the East stood in need, and laying them down in Eastern market on their own terms, turn back the channels of trade from their ancient direction. ”

“ The peoples of that region, the various Arab tribes and more especially those ancestors of the Phoenicians, the mysterious Red Men, were the active carries or intermediaries. The growth of civilization in India created an active merchange marine, trading to the Euphrates and Africa, and eastward we know not whither. The Arab merchants, apparently, tolerated the presence of Indian traders in Africa, but reserved for themselves the commerce within the Red Sea; that lucrative commerce which supplied precious stones and spices and incense to the ever-increasing service of the gods of Egypt. ”

“ The Yueh-chi opened up the commerce between India and the Roman Empire. Here, as in Central Asia, the trade had been merely incidental and subject to depredations of numerous savage tribes. The Parthians had done what they could to control and or- ganize it and to levy tribute on the Roman merchants, but they had not controlled it to the eastward. The existence of unified power in the Indus Valley and Afghanistan made possible a regular trade from the Ganges to the Euphrates. The rapid growth of such trade is indicated by the coinage of the Yueh-chi Kings in India. ”

“ These Men of the Moon are hereditarily the greatest traders in Africa, and are the only people, who, for love of barter and change, will leave their own country as porters and go to the coast, and they do so with as much zest as our country-folk go to a fair. ”

“ To a merchant familiar with the all but tideless waters of the Red Sea, it must indeed have been a wonder of nature. The same thing occurs in many places where a strong tide is forced into a narrow, shallow and curving estuary, as in Burma, the Bay of Fundy, the Bay of Panama, and elsewhere. According to the Imperial Gazetteer of India , IX, 297, high spring tides in the Gulf of Cambay rise and fall as much as 33 feet, and run at a velocity of 6 to 7 knots an hour. ”

“ It is unlikely that the original inhabitants of this country knew anything of cinnamon until they had heard of its commercial value from the natives of India or Arabs, who have been known to the coastal people from the earliest times. These same traders, if they penetrated into the interior at all, which is extremely doubtful, would have hunted for anything of any commercial value, and if cinnamon had existed they would have continued to export it up to the present day as they do frankincense, myrrh and gum arabic. ”

“ Our author is describing a sailing-course which is obvious by referring to the map. The straight course before the trade-wind, from Hisn Ghorab to the Gulf of Cambay or the mouth of the Indus, would carry a vessel along the Arabian shore as far as Ras Fartak, beyond which the coast gradually recedes, so that the vessel would stand out to sea without changing its course. A vessel bound for the Malabar ports and sailing before the wind, with the type of rigging then in use, would have required steering off her course the whole time, thus describing a wide curve before making the Indian coast. ”

“ We learn from the Koran (Chap. XXXIV) that the journey was easy between these cities, and travel secure by night or by day; the distances being so short that the heat of the day might be passed in one, and the night in the next, so that provisions need not be carried. The number of such settlements may be inferred from Strabo's statement that the caravans took seventy days between Minaea and Aelana; and all the Greek and Roman writers, from Eratosthenes to Pliny, testify to the value of the trade, the wealth of those who controlled it, and their jealous hindrance of all competition. ”

“ The upper reaches of the Nile were peopled by various negro tribes, entirely distinct from Egyptian or Berber. From the mouth of the Red Sea there was a regular trade-route across the Tigre highlands to the Atbara River and so to the Nile; and other routes reached Meroe from the Sudan and Uganda. Thence the products of trade found their way down-stream to Elephantine, beyond which no negro was permitted to go. Here was the market for all Egypt, and the modern town, Assuan, repeats its history, as the very name means "market." ”

“ While temporarily in eclipse under the Homerite kings, it had regained its position by the 4th century A. D. when Constantius negotiated for a church to be built there; and the Arabian geographers and Marco Polo refer to its activities in terms almost as glowing as those of Agatharchides.
The Periplus gives the port the name of the entire district; Eudaemon like Felix, being an attempt at translating Yemen, "the country to the right hand" (as one faces the east) ; the Arabic, like the Greek and Latin, attaching the idea of good fortune to the right hand. ”

“ More recently again they have been imported from India, or from nations beyond the countries of India. But it is looked upon as the most refined of all, to present chaplets made of nard leaves, or else of silk of many colors steeped in unguents. Such is the pitch to which the luxuriousness of our women has at last arrived!"
Among both Greek and Roman writers there was some confusion between cotton and silk, both being called "tree wool;" and Fabricius, in his translation of the Periplus, omits silk altogether, considering raw material, yarn and cloth alike to be Turkestan cotton. ”

“ There is also a third port of Arabia, Muza by name ; it is not, however, used by persons on their passage to India, as only those touch at it who deal in incense and the perfumes of Arabia. More in the interior there is a city; the residence of the king there is called Sapphar, and there is another city known by the name of Save. To those who are bound for India, Ocelis is the best place for em- barcation. If the wind, called Hippalus, happens to be blowing, it is possible to arrive in forty days at the nearest mart in India, Muziris by name. ”