Page:The principal navigations, voyages, traffiques and discoveries of the English nation 16.djvu/302

 and Africa, and passed through Armenia, Assyria, Persia, and Bactria, standing northerly in 44. degrees of latitude, which is the farthest countrey in longitude wherein he was in all his iourneyes. From thence he descended into India by the mountaines of Imaus, and the valleyes of Paropanisus, and prepared a nauie in the riuer Indus, and therewith passed into the Ocean sea, where he turned by the lands of Gedrosia, Caramania, and Persia, vnto the great citie of Babylon, leauing Onesicritus and Nearcus captaines of his fleete, which afterwards came vnto him by the straight of the Persian sea, and vp the riuer of Euphrates, leauing that countrey and coast discouered.

After this, Ptolemey raigned king of Egypt, who by some is reputed to haue been bastard sonne vnto Philip father of the foresaid Alexander the great. This Ptolemey imitating the forenamed kings Sesostris and Darius, made a trench or ditch of an hundred foote broad and of thirty foote deepe, and ten or twelue leagues in length till he came to The bitter Welles, pretending to haue his worke run into the sea from a mouth of the riuer Nilus, called Pelusium, passing nowe by the citie Damiata. But this thing tooke none effect; for that the Red sea was thought to be higher by three cubits then the land of Egypt, which would haue ouerflowed all the countrey, to the ruine and losse thereof.

In the yeere 277. before the incarnation succeeded in the gouernment of the kingdome one Philadelphus, who brought to passe that the marchandises should come out of Europe to the citie of Alexandria vpwards by the riuer Nilus vnto a city named Coptus, and from thence to be conueyed by land to a hauen standing vpon the Red sea called Myos-Hormos; which way was trauailed in the night, the pilots directing themselues by the stars, which were expert in that practise. And because water was scant that way, they vsed to carry it with them for all the companie, till at the last to auoide that trouble they digged very deepe wels, and made large cisterns for the receipt of raine water, by which the way furnished with that commoditie, which at the first it wanted, grewe in continuance of time to be the more frequented.

But whereas the straight way was dangerous by reason of flats