Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 1).djvu/50

 on a wind, they were capable of considerable speed when the wind was right aft. Thus Pliny states that a merchant-ship passed from Messina to Alexandria in six days; another from the Pillars of Hercules to Ostia in seven; another from the nearest port of Spain in four; another from Narbonne in three, and another from Africa in two. So, too, Arrian relates that the ship in which he sailed on the Euxine accomplished five hundred stadia (or, as is more probable, three hundred stadia) before mid-day; and St. Luke tells us that he ran from Rhegium to Puteoli (one hundred and eighty-two miles) by the second day after he had started: but, in all these cases, we may be quite sure that the sailors had (as St. Luke distinctly states was his case) a good stiff breeze abaft.