Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 1).djvu/206

 employment for the native vessels, beyond what was required in the pearl fisheries and in the ordinary course of traffic.

Though from the age of Ptolemy the trade between Western Europe and India was carried on by the way of Egypt, Rome and Constantinople being alike supplied by the agency of the merchants of Alexandria, we have not, till the reign of Justinian, any further information concerning the progress of the over-sea trade, or of any discoveries with reference to the more remote regions of the East. In the course, however, of his reign, Cosmas (commonly called, from the voyages he made, Indicopleustes, an Egyptian merchant), went on more than one occasion to India; and when, in after days, he renounced the pursuits of commerce, and became a monk, he composed in the solitude and leisure of his cell, several works, one of which (his "Christian Topography") has been preserved. It is not, indeed, a work of any special merit, consisting, as it does, chiefly of fanciful views about the shape of the globe. With a condemnation of the notions of Ptolemy, and of other "speculative" geographers, it contains, however, much curious and reliable information with reference to the countries he had himself visited, and especially, to the western coast of the Indian peninsula. Indeed, from the time of the merchant Arrian to that of Marco Polo, Cosmas, who traded on the coast of Malabar about the middle of the sixth century, is the only writer of note who gives any account of the maritime and commercial affairs of India, during a period of twelve centuries.