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CHAP. IX.

ON THE COMMERCE OF THE ANCIENTS.

Connection between Commerce and Geography.-Trade with India in the Hands of the Arabians.-Their Wealth and Luxury.-Cinnamon.-Ignorance as to the Country which produced it.-Known to Moses.-Supposed to grow in Arabia and in Africa.-Pliny's Account.-Antiquity of Trade in the Eastern Seas.-Pirate Nations of the East.-Productions of the Moluccas mentioned by Plautus.-Early Commerce of the Phoenicians examined.Tin brought to Egypt from India.-The Cassiterides.-Never known.-Direct Trade between Phoenicia and the West improbable.-Carthage.-Never aimed at a distant carrying Trade.-Amber.-Brought to Greece from the Adriatic. Mythical Connection of the Eridanus and Amber.-Trade in Europe. Conclusion.

THE history of commerce is intimately connected with that of geography; for the wants and desires of mankind, which require the agency of the merchant, are the most uniform and efficient incentives to the correspondence of nations. The traffic carried on between distant countries in early times, the commodities of use or luxury imported or sent abroad, are often much more easily detected than the extent of geographical knowledge possessed by either of the parties. In a scientific age the acquaintance with the earth's surface possesses an interest independent of its practical advantages; but in the early stages of society the different regions of the globe attracted attention chiefly as they promised to yield a quick harvest of wealth and treasure. The most important commerce in ancient times was that carried on with India; and it is that also which has been most frequently mentioned in the course of the preceding pages. If all the authentic circumstances of that great trade be minutely traced backward, they will be found rich in results calculated to elucidate the progress of discovery in the East, and may lend even some light to assist us in investigating the more dubious intercourse of western nations.

Pliny informs us, that in his time the navigation to India was only in its infancy; and a comparison of all the accounts remaining to us respecting the commerce of the ancients with the East leads to the conclusion, that before the discovery of the monsoons by Hippalus the direct trade with India was wholly in the hands of the Arabians. The fleets of the Ptolemies sailed to the ports of Arabia Felix, where they met the Arabian ships laden with the precious cargoes of the East. Single Greek vessels may, indeed, have occasionally_visited the country whence so much wealth was poured into Europe but that a direct trade did not exist between India and Egypt until the discovery of the monsoons obviated the necessity of

proceeding by the Arabian coast: that the Arabians enjoyed a monopoly with respect to Egypt, and Egypt with respect to Europe, are facts proved by indisputable evidence.

That the Greeks of Egypt should so long permit the petty princes of Arabia to intercept a large portion of their profit was the necessary consequence of the imperfect navigation of antiquity. The navigator, so long as from the imperfection of his art he is afraid to venture out of sight of land, is constantly at the mercy of those whose coast he follows. Obliged frequently to land in order to procure provisions, to rest his crew impatient of confinement, or to draw his frail vessels into a place of shelter, he finds it impossible to pursue his course without securing the amicable feelings of the natives. Hence the impossibility of distant trading voyages in ancient times. The commodities of countries remote from one another were interchanged by repeated transfer from hand to hand, each intermediate link in the chain sharing in the advantages of the communication. But any attempt to disturb this system, by establishing a direct correspondence between the extreme points, naturally awakened the hostility of the intermediate states whose agency was dispensed with; and as commerce cannot long exist without security, mercantile adventure was obliged to confine itself within narrow bounds, and to seek the nearest ports rather than the largest profits.

The Arabians, however, in their trade with India, appear to have been in some measure exempted from the restrictions necessarily attendant on the coasting system. The superstitious aversion of the Hindoos to the sea permitted the carrying trade of their coasts to be exercised by a strange people. Foreign trade appears to have been known to the Hindoos from very remote ages. In the laws of Menû are found provisions relating to the insurance of ships at sea; and as the Hindoos themselves, though excellent merchants, are never seamen, it is probable that the Arabians were always employed by them in the latter capacity. Indeed as far back as authentic history conducts us, we can discern traces of Arabian navigation in the Indian seas. Arabian names, as for example, Gezirah, the Promontory, are met with in the voyage of Næarchus, and the people called Arabite, whom he found on the coast not far from the Indus, were probably settlers from the opposite side of the gulf.

It is no wonder that the Arabian merchants, possessing the lucrative monopoly of the Indian trade, should be distinguished in antiquity by their luxury and enormous wealth: they are spoken of by the Greek and Latin writers nearly in the language applied by the prophet Isaiah to the inhabitants of Tyre,

"whose merchants are princes, and whose traffickers are the honourable of the earth."* All the precious commodities, the gold, the gums, and spices imported to the West from the southern parts of Arabia, were once supposed to be the produce of that country; and there are some who still defend that opinion, from a pertinacious attachment to ancient errors. The delusion was, however, beginning to vanish in the time of Pliny, who questions the right of Arabia Felix to bear that title; a pestilential climate, with a soil barren in many places, and unprovided with the precious metals, seemed to him to afford but slender claims to the epithet of Happy.

According to Herodotus, frankincense, myrrh, cassia, cinnamon, and laudanum were all peculiar to Arabia. Cassia is supposed to have been the pipe-cinnamon of modern commerce: the cinnamon of the ancients was the tender shoot of the plant, and an article of such high price, as to be a fit present for kings: to offer to the gods crowns of cinnamon, tipped with gold, was a refinement of imperial prodigality worthy of the wealthiest age of Rome. The frankincense, Herodotus tells us, was guarded by winged serpents: the value of cassia was enhanced by dangers still more formidable: the trees on which it grew gave shelter to great birds, resembling bats, so fierce and strong as to be vanquished with extreme difficulty. But with respect to cinnamon, the Arabians, he says, could not distinctly explain the origin of that precious commodity; they pretended that it was brought to them by birds from the country (India) in which Bacchus was reared: these birds built their nests among inaccessible rocks, and on the tops of mountains: the Arabians, unable to reach them, strewed the limbs of asses and oxen at no great distance; and these being quickly carried off by the birds, and proving too heavy for the nests, fell to the ground with the cinnamon adhering to them, as the reward of the artifice. Thus the Arabians sought to dignify or to screen their monopoly by the mists of fable.

Now cassia and cinnamon were imported into Egypt and to Tyre in very early ages: they are distinctly and repeatedly named by Moses. In the time of Ezekiel, "the men of Dan and Javan (the eastern Javan) going to and fro, brought cassia, calamus, and bright iron." "The merchants of Sheba and Raameh were occupied with the chief of all spices, with gold and precious stones." Thus we see that the productions of India were brought to Tyre both by caravans from the Persian Gulf and by Phoenician vessels, probably from the ports of Arabia Felix. These productions were imported by the Arabians

*Isa. xxiii. 8.

† Exodus, xxx. 23.

from Malabar, whither some of them (and cinnamon among others) were probably brought from remoter countries by the Malays or native navigators of the Indian seas.

Yet it was still believed in the Augustan age that cinnamon, cassia, and other spices were the produce of the Happy Arabia; a clear proof that the Greeks of Egypt had not yet established a direct trade with India, and that the ports of Arabia continued to be the emporia of eastern produce. Some years later, the sensible Arrian, the author of the Periplus of the Erythrean Sea, though well acquainted with the native regions and chief markets of the other spices, was still totally in the dark with regard to cinnamon; whence it may be inferred that it did not grow in his time either in Malabar or Ceylon, but probably constituted a branch of the regular trade which was carried on with Sumatra by the Indian ships. When Arrian says that cinnamon grows in Azania, on the western coast of Africa, he commits an error far too wide of the truth to allow of palliation or support; but his positive assertion seems to countenance the opinion of those who, believing that the south-western coasts of Africa received in early times an Indian colony, think it likely that advantage was taken of the circumstance to escape the rapacious monopoly of the Arabs, and that precious cargoes were often carried across the ocean from India to Azania. whence they were brought direct to Egypt. Some communication of this sort must certainly have given rise to the belief of Indian geographers, partially admitted by Arrian, and adopted in all its rigour by Ptolemy, that the Indian islands are at no great distance from the western coast of Africa. It is worthy of remark, that though Arrian believed that cinnamon was derived from África, he nevertheless does not mention it among the articles exported from that country. Pliny appears still to have thought that cinnamon was the produce of Africa; yet he relates a story which, though mingled with fable, throws not a little light upon the truth. "Cinnamon," he says, "grows in Ethiopia among the Troglodytes; the Ethiopians, buying it from their neighbours, transport it through the vast sea in vessels without sails or rudders. They put to sea in winter, when Eurus (the east wind) blows, and go to Ocelis. The spice is gathered by the consent of Jupiter, whom they call Assabinum (Siva!). These merchants return to Arabia hardly once in five years." This relation makes it evident that cinnamon arrived in Arabia from the south-east in vessels coming from a great distance, and crossing the ocean by favour of the trade winds. The mention of Ethiopians and Troglodytes is but a recurrence of the expression of Hindoo geography, which unites Africa with the Indian Archipelago. In fine, it is impossible to avoid

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