Page:The Periplus of the Erythræan Sea.djvu/13



The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea is one of those human documents, like the journals of Marco Polo and Columbus and Vespucci, which express not only individual enterprise, but the awakening of a whole race towards new fields of geographical discovery and commercial achievement. It is the first record of organized trading with the nations of the East, in vessels built and commanded by subjects of the Western World. It marks the turning of a tide of commerce which had set in one direction, without interruption, from the dawn of history. For thousands of years before the emergence of the Greeks from savagery, or before the exploits of the Phoenicians in the Mediterranean and Atlantic, human culture and commerce had centered in the countries bordering on the Persian Gulf; in Elam and Babylonia, and in the "whole land of Havilah, where there is gold: and the gold of that land is good; there is bdellium and the onyx stone." With the spread of culture in both directions, Egypt and the nations of Ancient India came into being, and a commercial system was developed for the interchange of products within those limits, having its center of exchanges near the head of the Persian Gulf. The peoples of that region, the various Arab tribes and more especially those ancestors of the Phoenicians, the mysterious Red Men, were the active carries or intermediaries. The growth of civilization in India created an active merchange marine, trading to the Euphrates and Africa, and eastward we know not whither. The Arab merchants, apparently, tolerated the presence of Indian traders in Africa, but reserved for themselves the commerce within the Red Sea; that lucrative commerce which supplied precious stones and spices and incense to the ever-increasing service of the gods of Egypt. This prospered according to the prosperity of the Pharaohs. The muslins and spices of India they fetched themselves or received from the Indian traders in their ports on either side of the Gulf of Aden; carrying them in turn over the highlands to the upper Nile, or through the Red Sea and across the desert to Thebes or Memphis. In the rare intervals when the eyes of Egypt were turned eastward, and voyages of commerce and conquest were despatched to the Eastern Ocean, the