Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 1).djvu/180

 *tion of the contents of the caravans to the most populous districts. Founded, as is believed, before the dawn of history, Bactra was for many centuries the most flourishing mart of Eastern commerce; the western and the northern roads into India passed through it; and the ruins still surrounding it for miles attest its former size and splendour.

It was the obvious policy of the Bactrian people, holding as they did in their own hands the advantage of a great trade, to give as little information as they could of the actual sources whence came the wealth or the luxuries in such demand with the merchants of the West. Hence the dismal tales of the sandy deserts to be traversed, of the many dangers to be surmounted, and of the terrible "griffins," which, according to Herodotus and Ctesias, were the guardians of the gold-bearing districts. Even Arrian, the shrewd Alexandrian merchant, speaks of the land whence the glistening hanks of silk were obtained—the land of Thina (China), as a country practically inaccessible. "It is not easy to get there," he says, "and of those who attempt the journey, few are ever seen again. Once a year there come to the borders of Thina, a set of ill-formed, broad-faced, and flat-nosed savages, who bring with them their wives and children, and carry great burdens in mats. They stop short at a certain place between their own territory and that of Thina, where, seated on their mats, they celebrate a kind of festival, and then, having disposed of their goods, of which their silk is the chief, to the people of Thina,