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 choosing the proper seasons, the one would carry him out and the other bring him home.

The course of the voyage, and even the time occupied by it, is minutely to detailed by the elder Pliny. The cargo destined for India being embarked on the Nile, was conveyed by it and a short canal to Coptos, a distance of 303 miles. At Coptos the land carriage commenced, and was continued 258 miles ta Berenice, on the west shore of the Red Sea. From Berenice the vessel started about midsummer, and after a short halt near the Straits of Bab-el-mandeb, took its final departure usually for Musiris on the Malabar coast. The whole time occupied, on an average, from the Mediterranean to India was a little more than three months, or ninety-four days. Of these, the inland navigation to Coptos occupied twelve, the land transport to Berenice twelve, the voyage down the Red Sea thirty, and the voyage across the Indian Ocean forty days. The time occupied by the Red Sea voyage seems out of all proportion to the other, but may be accounted for partly by the difficulty of navigating a sea notorious for

baffling winds and storms, and perhaps partly also by delays which may have been occasioned by calling on both sides of the coast for the purpose of completing the cargo. The homeward voyage, commenced early in December, appears to have been the far more tedious of the two.

Though the Persians had failed to take advantage of their maritime proximity to India, the Romans had no sooner carried their eastern frontier to the