But the Phoenician discoveries perished with their historical records, amidst the ruin of their power and their commerce, by the successful arms of Alexander. The loss, however, which geography thus sustained, his widely extended conquests soon replaced. And it is from the distant expeditions of this ambitious con queror, that we must date the recommencement of that knowledge which the ancients acquired of the Asiatic continent. The wide extent of Persia, with the states on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean, he first over ran. Here he established the scat of his empire, and thus laid open this great and most civilized portion of Asia to the acquaintance of his Grecian subjects. Af ter his final victory over the Persians, he traversed in pursuit of the last Darius, and of Bessur, the murderer of that unfortunate monarch, that part of Asia which stretches from the Caspian sea, beyond the river Oxus, and through provinces hitherto unknown to the Greeks, advanced as far as Marcanda, a city then of some note, and destined, at a future period, under the name of Samarcand, to be the capital of an empire not inferior to his own in extent or power. The ambition of Alexan der only increased by his conquests, and he next turned his thoughts to the invasion of India. With this view, he set out from Bnctria, and crossed that ridge of moun tains denominated by oriental geographers, the Stony Girdle, which forms the northern barrier of Indki, by the same route through which Tamerlane, and Nadir Shah in after ages, invaded this country. After passing the mountains, he crossed the Indus at Taxella, now Attock, and marched forward on the road which leads directly to the Ganges, and the opulent provinces on the south-east, now comprehended under the general name of Ilindostan. But the strength and patience of his sol diers being at last exhausted, they, with one voice, re fused to advance further, and persisted in their resolu tion with such obstinacy, that _Alexander was obliged, reluctantly, to yield, and issue orders for marching hack to Persia. The scene of this memorable transaction was on the banks of the Hyphasis, the modern Bcyah, which was therefore the utmost limit of Alexander's progress in India. As, amidst the hurry of war and the rage of conquest, Alexander never lost sight of his commercial schemes, when on his return he reached the Hydaspes, he fitted out a numerous fleet, the desti nation of which was to sail down the Indus to the ocean, a distance of a thousand English miles, and from thence to proceed to the Persian gulf, that a communication by sea might be opened with India and the centre of his dominions. The conduct of this expedition was com mitted to Nearchus. Alexander himself accompanied him in his navigation down the river, taking on board one-third of his troops; while the remainder, marching in two divisions, one on the right, the other on the left of the river, attended them in their progress. When they reached the ocean, Alexander led his army back by land to Persia; and Nearchus, after a coasting voy age of seven months, conducted the fleet safely up the Persian gulf into the Euphrates. In this manner did Alexander first open the knowledge of Asia to the peo ple of Europe; and as all his movements were exactly delineated by men of science, whom he kept in pay for that purpose, he acquired a very extensive and accurate knowledge of the countries through which he passed. An exact account, not only of his military operations, but of every thing worthy of notice in the countries where they were carried on, was recorded in the me moirs or journals of three of his principal officers, Ptole my, Aristobulus, and Nearchus. The two former have not reached our times; but it is probable that the most important facts which they contained arc preserved, since Arrian professes to have followed them as guides, in his history of the expedition of Alexander. From the memoirs of those officers, Europe derived its first authentic information concerning the climate, the soil, the productions, and inhabitants of India. And in a country where the manners, the customs, and even the dress of the people, are almost as permanent and inva riable as the face of the country itself, it is surprising how exactly the descriptions given by Alexander's offi cers delineate what we now behold at the distance of two thousand years. The stated change of seasons, now known by the name of monsoons; the periodical rains; the swelling of the rivers; the inundations which these occasion; the appearance of the country during their continuance ; are particularly mentioned and described. No less accurate are the descriptions which they have given of the inhabitants, their delicate and slender form, their dark complexion, their black uncurled hair, their garments of cotton, their living entirely on vegetable food; their division into separate tribes or casts, the members of which never intermarry ; the custom of wives burning themselves with their deceased husbands ; and many other particulars, in all which they perfectly resemble the modern Hindoos.
The geography of Asia, which the excursions of Alex ander thus opened up, was rendered more permanent by the cities which he founded in his progress. These he erected in every province which he subdued, and peo pled partly with natives, and partly with such of his European subjects as were worn out with the fatigues of service, and wished for repose, and a permanent es tablishment. And the farther he pushed his conquests
from the banks of the Euphrates, which may be con sidered as the centre of his dominions, he found it ne cessary to build and fortify a greater number. Several of these to the east and south of the Caspian sea are mentioned by ancient authors; and in India itself lie founded two cities on the banks of the Hydaspcs, and a third on the Acesines, both navigable rivers, which, after uniting their streams, fall into the Indus. These cities, which were designed as a chain of posts to keep open the communication between the different provinces of his dominions, and as places of strength to overawe and curb the conquered people, must, it is apparent, have likewise been exceedingly favourable to the ex tension and accuracy of geographical knowledge.
The Macedonian conquest, therefore, may be consi dered as the origin of permanent discovery in Asia. Indeed, little was afterwards added by the ancients to the knowledge which was thus acquired. Seleucus, the successor of Alexander in the Persian provinces of his empire, marched an army into India, fiir the purpose of establishing his own authority there, and of curbing Sandracottus, king of the Prasii, a powerful nation on the banks of the Ganges, who threatened the Macedo nian territories. Unfortunately no account of this expe dition has reached our times. All we know of it is, that he advanced considerably beyond the utmost limit of Alexander's progress, and would probably have pro ceeded much farther, but was obliged to return to op pose Antigonus, who was preparing to invade his domi nions. Seleucus afterwards sent Megasthenes, an officer who had accompanied Alexander in his Indian expedi tion, as ambassador to Sandracottus, in whose famous capital Palibothra he resided several years. This jour ney of .Megasthenes made Europeans acquainted with a large extent of country, of which they had not hitherto any knowledge ; and, on his return, he satisfied the cu riosity of his countrymen, by publishing an ample ac count of what he observed, both during his progress, and his residence in the capital of the Prasii. This embassy to Sandracottus, and another to his son, are the last transactions of the Syrian monarchs in India, of which we have any account. From that period, to the of the Cape of Good Hope, a period of six teen hundred years, no European power penetrated so far into the Asiatic continent. All schemes of conquest in that quarter were relinquished, and nothing more was aimed at by any nation, than to secure an intercourse of trade with those opulent regions. This commerce was now the chief channel by which the knowledge of Asia was communicated to Europe. That branch of it carried on by the way of the Red Sea and the Nile with Alexandria, which formed the grand medium of inter course between the eastern and western worlds, until the discovery of a southern passage contributed to dis close the coasts; while the inland trade, by the route of Samercand, the river Oxus, and the Caspian and Euxine seas, opened sources of intelligence concerning the northern, or rather central, parts of this continent. The knowledge, however, derived from these quarters, was but circumscribed; and a trade carried on in the same dull tracks, by unenlightened merchants, intent only on gain, did not greatly extend the geography of Asia.
The celebrated system of geography published by Ptolemy at Alexandria, in the second century, exhibits the extent of ancient knowledge in this quarter of the globe. To the north it seems to have been bounded by the Caspian Sea, and the mountains of Independent Tartary. The extreme points of discovery in the east, are towards the sea, the metropolis Sinx, and inland Se ra, the metropolis of the Seres. In the Southern Ocean they were acquainted with an island called Taprobane, generally supposed to be Ceylon, and some smaller is lands to the east. With regard to the position of the metropolis Sera, and the metropolis Sinx, these most distant stations mentioned in ancient geography, modern geographers have entertained very different opinions. Sinx has such a near resemblance in sound to China, the name by which the most powerful empire in the East is known to Europeans, that, upon their first ac quaintance with it, they hastily concluded them to be the same ; and, of consequence, it was supposed that China was known to the ancients, though no point appears to be more ascertained, than that they never advanced so far as this country. The celebrated geographer D'An ville has placed those extreme stations on the western frontiers of the Chinese empire ; but, according to the much more probable opinion, the metropolis of the Seres was situated in the modern country of Little Buckaria, while that of the Sinx is the town of Tanaserim, in the kingdom of Siam. Beyond these points Ptolemy de clares the earth to be altogether unknown, and asserts, that the land turns thence to the westward, and stretches in that direction until it joins the promontory of Pras sum, in Ethiopia, which, according to his idea, termi nated the continent of Africa to the south. In conse quence of this error, no less unaccountable than enor mous, he must have believed the Red Sea, in its whole extent, from the coast of Africa to that of Cambodia, to be a vast bason, without any communication with the ocean.