Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 1).djvu/152

 Tatary. These different highways will be found laid down on a map, which has been prepared for reference (see Frontispiece), wherein will also be found the courses adopted by the vessels of ancient times in the navigation of the Asiatic seas, which, as far as can now be ascertained, was chiefly confined to the Arabian and Persian Gulfs, and the Indian Ocean. The periodical winds in these gulfs when once ascertained, rendered navigation comparatively easy, but, in navigating the Indian Ocean at the time of Alexander's expedition, the monsoons were either not generally known to extend across the Indian Ocean, or were not made available to any great extent. Voyages, in the days of Herodotus, and for three centuries afterwards, were almost wholly of a coasting character.

Although Alexander endeavoured, when he took possession of Babylonia, to remove the obstructions by which the Persians had blockaded the river Tigris, and, by this and other means, hoped to restore the maritime commerce they had destroyed, he was only partially successful; hence, subsequently, the great bulk of the sea-borne trade between the Western and Eastern world reverted to the Arabian Gulf, and, with a few unimportant deviations, continued in that route until the Portuguese successfully doubled the Cape of Good Hope. For some time, however, after his death this new trade was materially retarded by the anarchy which occurred on that event; nor did it thoroughly revive until Ptolemy Philadelphus established an embassy on the coast of Hindustan, and, at the same time, built the port of Berenice, on the Red Sea, at