Page:The Periplus of the Erythræan Sea.djvu/14

 officers of the Pharaohs found the treasures of all its shores gathered in the nearest ports, and sought no further to trace them to their sources.

As the current of trade gradually flowed beyond the Nile and Euphrates to the peoples of the north, and their curiosity began to trace the better things toward their source in India, new trade-routes were gradually opened. The story of the world for many centuries was that of the struggles of the nations upon the Nile and the Euphrates to win all the territory through which the new routes passed, and so to prevent the northern barbarians from trading with others than themselves. It was early in this struggle that one brance of the people known as the Phoenicians left their home on the Persian Gulf and settled on the Mediterranean, there to win in the West commercial glories which competition in the East was beginning to deny them. The Greek colonies, planted at the terminus of every trade-route, gained for themselves a measure of commercial independence; but never until the overthrow of the East by the great Alexander was the control of the great overland caravan-routes threatened by a western people, and his early death led to no more than a readjustment of conditions as they had always existed.

Meantime the brethren of the Phoenicians and their kinsfolk in Arabia continued in control of the carrying trade of the East, subject to their agreements and alliances with the merchants of India. One Arab kingdom after another retained the great eastern coast of Africa, with its trade in gold and ivory, ostrich feathers and oil; the shores of the Arabian Gulf produced an ever-rising value in frankincense and myrrh; while the cloths and precious stones, the timbers and spices—particularly cinnamon—brought from India largely by Indian vessels, were redistributed at Socotra or Guardafui, and carried to the Nile and the Mediterranean. Gerrha and Obollah, Palmyra and Petra, Sabbath and Mariaba were all partners in this commercial system. The Egyptian nation in its later struggles made no effort to oppose or control it. The trade came and the price was paid. And the infusion of Greek energy after Alexander's day, when the Ptolemies had made Egypt once more mistress of the nations, led to nothing more than the conquest of a few outposts on the Red Sea and at the head of the Gulf of Aden; while the accounts of Agatharchides are sufficient proof of the opulance which came to Southern Arabia with the increase of prosperity in Egypt. Here, indeed, the trade control was more complete than ever; for changes in the topography of India, the westward shifting of the Indus delta, the shoaling of the harbors in the Cutch region, and the disorder incident to