Page:History of India Vol 6.djvu/59

 THE RED SEA ROUTE TO INDIA 23 other six. While, moreover, the Egyptian coast-passage is impeded by northerly winds during most of the year in the upper part of the Red Sea, the navigation at its southern end is aided by regular variations in the air currents, southerly winds predominating from October to June, and northerly winds from June to October. The establishment of the emporium at Berenice in the third century B. c. thus paved the way for a vast ex- pansion of the Eastern trade as soon as the monsoons were put to their mercantile uses. Egyptian merchant fleets sailed from Berenice or Myos Hormos in July, rounded the modern Aden with a halt at Kane in August, and were blown rudely across the Arabian Sea to Malabar by the middle of Septem- bera voyage of sixty or seventy days from the Egyp- tian to the Indian coast. Having sold their western freights and bartered their bullion for eastern cargoes, they started from India at the end of December, and were wafted more gently back by the winter monsoon to their Red Sea harbours about the beginning of March. This monsoon route became the chief channel for the bulkier produce, as well as for the precious gems and wares, of India; enriched the ports along its line; and made Alexandria the commercial metropolis of the Roman Empire. Pliny lamented the vast shipments of gold and silver sent from Europe to pay for the prod- ucts of Asia. " In no year," he says, " does India drain our Empire of less than fifty-five millions of sesterces (458,000), giving back her own wares in exchange, which are sold at one hundred times their prime cost,"