Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 1).djvu/160



The homeward voyage was regulated by the same experience. Remaining on the coast of India from the end of September, or beginning of October, to the early part of December, two months of the finest weather were thus obtained for the discharge of the vessels and the disposal of their cargoes, as also for taking on board the return lading in exchange. The 13th of January was fixed as the latest date for leaving the coast; and it is here worthy of remark, that the original order for the fleets of Portugal, fifteen centuries afterwards, was subject to a similar regulation. Quitting the coast of India on or about the 10th of January, they would easily reach Aden in twenty or thirty days, where they would most probably remain until they could derive the benefit of the Gunseen winds, which, from about the middle of March, blow steadily from the south for fifty or sixty days, and thus have a fair wind to carry them to Berenice. Thus the winds prevailing in the Gulf at different seasons of the year were as valuable to the ancient ships as the true monsoons in the Indian Ocean.

It is much to be regretted that no descriptions exist of the character of these fleets, of the men by whom they were navigated, or of their merchant owners. It seems, however, a reasonable conjecture that they were in many respects similar to the vessels the Romans employed in the grain trade between Alexandria and Egypt, of which St. Paul's ship may be considered as a type. In all likelihood they were chiefly owned by the merchants of Rome and of Alexandria, and commanded by men from the Grecian and other maritime states of the Roman empire; the crew, on the other hand, were probably