Page:Indian Shipping, a history of the sea-borne trade and maritime activity of the Indians from the earliest times.djvu/151

 Ctesias also refers to a lake in the country of the Pygmies upon the surface of which oil is produced. This is supposed to mean Upper Burma, where there is a tribe answering to this description, and where "there are also the only largely productive petroleum deposits, which, moreover, we know to have been worked since the earliest times." Ctesias also mentions gold being obtained on certain "high-towering mountains" inhabited by the Griffins, which have been recognized as Tibetan mastiffs, "specimens of which, by the way, appear to have been taken to the Persian Court as examples of the gold-digging ants first described by Herodotus."