Page:Indian Shipping, a history of the sea-borne trade and maritime activity of the Indians from the earliest times.djvu/39

 find a remarkably active intercourse with foreign countries established by the efforts of man, and a conquest achieved over the natural environment. The great and almost impregnable barriers on the north are pierced by mountain-passes which have been throughout used as the pathways of commerce and communication with the external world. Towards the south the ocean from its very nature proved a far more effective and fatal barrier to the cultivation of foreign relations, till the rapid development of national shipping triumphed over that obstacle and converted the ocean itself into a great highway of international intercourse and commerce. The early growth of her shipping and ship-building, coupled with the genius and energy of her merchants, the skill and daring of her seamen, the enterprise of her colonists, and the zeal of her missionaries, secured to India the command of the sea for ages, and helped her to attain and long maintain her proud position as the mistress of the Eastern seas. There was no lack of energy on the part of Indians of old in utilizing to the full the opportunities presented by nature for the development of Indian maritime activity—the fine geographical position of India in the heart of the Orient, with Africa on the west and the Eastern Archipelago and Australia on the east, her connection with the vast mainland of Asia on the north, her possession of a sea-board that extends over more than four thousand miles, and