Page:India as known to the Ancient World.djvu/22

10 formerly voyages to India, coasting along the shore until Hippalus first ventured to cross the ocean by observing the monsoon. The monsoon was known however from the earliest times to all who sailed along the Arabian and African coast. Down to the very end of the Middle Ages, the voyage from Ormuzd to India was rarely attempted except at the commencement of the middle of the monsoon.

EGYPT

The trade of the ancient Egyptians had given them very little knowledge of geography. Indeed the whole trade of the Egyptians was carried on by buying goods from their nearest neighbours on one side and selling them to those on the other side of them. Long voyages were unknown; and though the trading-wealth of Egypt had mainly arisen from carrying the merchandise of India and Arabia Felix from the ports on the Red Sea to the ports on the Mediterranean, the Egyptians seem to have gained no knowledge of the countries from which these goods came. They bought them of the Arab traders who came to Cosseir and the Troglodytic Berenicê from the opposite coast; the Arabs had probably bought them from the caravans that had carried them across the desert from the Persian Gulf; because these land journeys across the desert were for the Arabs both easier and cheaper than a coasting voyage. On the contrary, India seems to have been known to the Greeks prior to Alexander, as a country which by sea was to be reached by way of the Euphrates and the