COMMERCE. From the earliest histmic times, products from the S.E. of Asia have been carried to the west by the same sea routes its are now followed, or have been, as now, carried across the deserts of Central Asia and through the passes in its mountain ranges.
The earliest route between Europe and India of which there is any record in the works of Hero dotus, Strabo, Pliny, and others, was by the Red Sea. Even before the building of Troy, spices, drugs, and many other kinds of merchandise were sent from tho East by this route. The ships coining from the Indian aeas landed their cargoes at Arsinoe (Suez), frozn whence they were carried by caravans to Cassou, a city on the c,oast of the Mediterranean. The distance from Arainoe to Casson was about 105 miles. According to Strabo, this route was twice altered in search of a more commodious one. Sesostris of Egypt started the idea to which M. de Lesseps in the Christian year of 1869 gave effect. The Egyptian monarch caused a canal to be cut from the Red Sea to a branch of the Nile, and had ships built for carrying the traffic, but for some reason the enterprise did not succeed. In 1 Kings ix. 26, also, it is mentioned. that about WOO B.C., Solomon king of Israel made a navy of ships in Ezion-geber, which is beside Eloth, on the shore of the Red Sea, in the land of Edom.' And these ships brought gold, silver, and precious stones from Ophir and Tarshish in such quantities, that king Solomon exceeded all the kings of the earth for riches.' Silver wzis so plentiful at his court, that it was accounted nothing of.' The king's drinking-cups were made of pure gold, and his shields were covered with beaten gold. We are distinctly told that the navy of Tarshish brought gold and silver, ivory and apes and peacocks,' and Ophir has been supposed to have been some district or port in India. The Tarshish fleet is &aid to have arrived at Ezion-geber only once every three years, from which we may infer that the voyage was v. considerable one, or that the ships had to go with the S.W. monsoon and return with the N.E. winds, or made a trafficking voyage from one place to another, until the one cargo was sold and another shipped.
Neither place hag been identified. Had the ships visited the 3falay Peninsula, Sumatra, Java, or Borneo, they would have known of the Simia satyrus (the orang-utan of Malacca and Sumatra, the mia of Borneo), or seen the Siamanga syndac tyla, the long arms of which measure five feet six inches across iu an adult about three feet high. As at the present day, the ancient mariners boldly crossed the Arabian Sea, and reached Muziris, a port 011 the 3falabar coast of India, in a voyage of forty days, or about the middle of September, and they left Iudia on their return at the end of December. The races ruling in 'Mesopotamia, on the shores of the Persian Gulf, the Akkad and the Phcenicians, also prosecuted the Etistern trade.
The land routes have varied with the revolutions that have raised and swept away:the military rulers. They have, at times, led through tho deserts of Africa, have crossed the immense steppes of High Asia, and over the passes in its mountain ranges, and, as at the present day, caravans of camels, with their bales and chests bound with cords, as described in Ezekiel, trailed theirlong lengths along. Pliny (lib. vi. c. 4) particularly describes one route. Having arrived at Bactra,' he observes, the merchandise then descends the Icarus as far as the Oxus, and thence are carried down to the Caspian. They then cross that sea to the mouth of the Cyrus (the Kur), where they ascend that river, and, on going on shore, are transported by land for five days to the banks of the Phasis (Rion), where they once more embark, and are conveyed down to the Euxine.' In tho days of Augustus, Aulus Gellius de scribed the caravans of Arabia as being like armies in magnitude. The time and course of each caravan was marked by the convenience of mer chants and the position of watering-places. Each had its fixed time of starting, its invariable daily halting - places, its entrepots, and its points of junction with other caravans who would join it for protection.