Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 1).djvu/179

 gardens of pleasure were always crowded with eager inquirers after their friends and lovers," may have furnished an exaggerated description of its wealth, but far from a fabulous one, as the fame of that great city seems to rest on satisfactory evidence.

Of the actual commercial resources of India we have, however, no reliable accounts previous to the conquests of Darius and to the successful navigation of the Indus by his fleets. In his time, the country through which he passed was represented to be very populous and highly cultivated; and though his conquests did not extend beyond the district watered by the Indus, below Peucela, we cannot but form a high opinion of its opulence in ancient times, as well as of the number of its inhabitants, when we learn from Herodotus that the tribute Darius levied upon it was nearly one-third of the whole revenue of the Persian monarchy. But it was only when Alexander, two hundred years later, undertook his celebrated expedition, that sufficient knowledge of India was obtained to enable us fully to realize the real amount of its wealth, and some of the actual conditions of its civilization and commerce. Up to that period the more valuable commerce between Europe and India was conducted mainly by caravans passing through Bactra (Balkh), "the mother of cities," as it has been called from its great antiquity. From this important seat of inland Asiatic trade, the Oxus on the N.W., the Indus on the E. and S., and the Ganges to the S.E., stretched long branching-arms, and thus afforded ready means for the distribu-*