Page:History of the Indian Archipelago Vol 3.djvu/205

 ASIATIC NATIONS. 189 go for some little time before they became acquaint- ed, either directly or indirectly, with the spices, and the more distant countries which produced them. The Portuguese themselves, with their superior skill, enterprise, and activity, a thorough know- ledge of the value of the produce of the Moluccas, and an ardent desire to possess them, were some time at Malacca, and thirteen years in India, be- fore they reached the land of spices. A much longer time must be given to the indolence and ignorance of the Hindu navigators; some time, al- so, to acquire a knowledge of unknown commodi- ties ; and some time, too, for the ultimate consum- er to acquire a taste for them ; for I have presum- ed already, in treating of" the agriculture of those spices, and on the authority of language, that it was not the great tribes of the western portion of the Archipelago who taught the Hindus the prac- tice of using spices, but the Hindus those tribes. The first mention of the Golden Chersonesus is by the author of the Periphis of the Eri/lhrean Sea. He says there were, in the ports of Coro- mandel, large ships which traded with that country. Some commentators have conjectured that it must have been the Peninsula of Malacca that is here meant, but, as not one of the peculiar and exclu- sive products of the Archipelago are mentioned among the imports from thence, it appears impro- bable that this author could have meant any portion