Page:History of the Indian Archipelago Vol 3.djvu/216

 200 COMMERCE WITH by which the spices were transmitted, and the Jijth by which the silk of China reached the same peo- ple. It is probable, that the Jishermen of the coasts of Arabia, from the moment they emerged from the savage state, and acquired the strength and intelligence which civilization confers, became petty traders, and, with the assistance of the mon- soons, soon sailed to the rich and civilized coun- tries on each side of them, Egypt and Hindustan, as merchants and as pirates. * To say that the Arabians, or any other people living in the latitudes of the monsoons, discovered these monsoons, t is but a solecism, and no better, perhaps, than gravely asserting that the people of temperate regions had discovered tJieir own summer and winter. The dullest savages could not fail to observe the perpe- tual succession of a dry and a wet season, of an east and a west wind. The steady uniformity of these winds would inspire them with confidence, and the navigator would be tempted to make a dis- tant voyage in one season, reckoning, with confi- dence, upon the facility and certainty of getting navigators, in all age?, from the time that history begins to speak of them ; and there is every reason to imagine that they were equally so before the historians acquired a knowledge of tb.em, as they have since continued down to the present age." Vincent's Periplus, Vol. I. p. 61. f Vincent's Periplus, p. 62.
 * " Sabea, Hadramant, and Oman, were the residence of