Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 1.djvu/592

468 lution that happened in Egypt itself, seemed to have superseded the communication with the coast of Africa; for, in Strabo's time, few of the ports of the Indian Ocean, even those nearest the Red Sea, were known. I should, indeed, suppose, that the trade to India by Egypt decreased from the very time of the conquest by Cæsar. The mines the Romans had at the source of the river Betis *, in Spain, did not produce them above L. 15,000 a-year; this was not a sufficient capital for carrying on the trade to India, and therefore the immense riches of the Romans seem to have been derived from the greatness of the prices, not from the extent of the trade, In fact † , we are told that 100 per cent. was a profit in common trade upon the Indian commodities. Egypt now, and all its neighbourhood, began to wear a face of war, to which it had been a stranger for so many ages. The north of Africa was in constant troubles, after the first ruin of Carthage; so that we may imagine the trade to India began again, on that side, to be carried on pretty much in the same manner it had been before the days of Alexander. But it had enlarged itself very much on the Persian side, and found an easy, short inlet, into the north of Europe, which then furnished them a market and consumption of spices.

confess, notwithstanding, if it is true what Strabo says he heard himself in Egypt, that the Romans employed one hundred and twenty vessels in the Indian trade ‡, it must at that time have lost very little of its vigour. We must, however, imagine, that great part of this was for the

account,


 * Strabo, lib. 3. † Plin. ilb. vi. cap. 23. ‡ Strabo, lib. 2. p. 81.