Chap. XL] OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 247 found less intolerable than toil, hunger, and the loss of time; the attempt was seldom renewed ; and the only European who has passed that unfrequented way applauds his own diligence, that in nine months after his departure from Pekin he reached the mouth of the Indus. The ocean, however, was open to the free communication of mankind. From the great river to the tropic of Cancer, the provinces of China were subdued and civilized by the emperors of the North ; they were filled about the time of the Christian aera with cities and men, mulberry- trees and their precious inhabitants ; and, if the Chinese, with the knowledge of the compass, had possessed the genius of the Greeks or Phoenicians, they might have spread their discoveries over the southern hemisphere. I am not qualified to examine, and I am not disposed to believe, their distant voyages to the Persian gulf or the Cape of Good Hope ; but their ancestors might equal the labours and success of the present race, and the sphere of their navigation might extend from the isles of Japan to the straits of Malacca, the pillars, if we may apply that name, of an Oriental Hercules. 71 Without losing sight of land, they might sail along the coast to the extreme promontory of Achin, which is annually visited by ten or twelve ships laden with the productions, the manufactures, and even the artificers, of China ; the island of Sumatra and the opposite peninsula are faintly delineated 72 as the regions of gold and silver ; and the trading cities named in the geography of Ptolemy may indicate that this wealth was not solely derived from the mines. The direct interval between Sumatra and Ceylon is about three hundred leagues ; the Chinese and Indian navigators were conducted by the flight of birds and periodical winds, and the ocean might be securely traversed in square-built ships, which, instead of iron, kinson, the Pere Grueber, &c). See likewise Hanway's Travels, vol. i. p. 345-357. A communication through Thibet has been lately explored by the English sove- reigns of Bengal. 71 For the Chinese navigation to Malacca and Achin, perhaps to Ceylon, see Renaudot (on the two Mahometan Travellers, p. 8-11, 13-17, 141-157), Dampier (vol. ii. p. 136), the Hist. Philosophique des deux Indes (torn. i. p. 98), and the Hist. Generate des Voyages (torn. vi. p. 201). 72 The knowledge, or rather ignorance, of Strabo, Pliny, Ptolemy, Arrian, Marcian, &c. of the countries eastward of Cape Comorin, is finely illustrated by d'Anville (Antiquite Geographique de PInde, especially p. 161-198). Our geo- graphy of India is improved by commerce and conquest ; and has been illustrated by the excellent maps and memoirs of major Rennel. If he extends the sphere of his inquiries with the same critical knowledge and sagacity, he will succeed, and may surpass, the first of modern geographers.
