same market a limited supply of silk was obtained from such Chinese merchants as were venturesome enough to sail so far.[1] From Ceylon such vessels voyaged along the Malabar coast between Cape Comorin and Sindu, near the mouth of the Indus, receiving on board at various places supplies of cotton and linen fabrics for clothing, copper and rare woods, together with spices and aromatics, musk, castor, and especially pepper. In the harbours of that seaboard they also met with the merchants from Adule, most of whom sailed no farther, and provided them with the freight for their homeward voyage.[2]
The traders of Axume were not, however, wholly dependent for supplies on their intercourse with the Indies. Adjacent to their own borders lay wide tracts of country which were to them a fruitful source of the most valuable commodities; and with such their ships were laden when outward bound for the further East. Journeying to the south-*east they entered an extensive but wild region called Barbaria,[3] part of which was known as the Land of Frankincense, from its peculiar fecundity in that odoriferous balsam. In this region cinnamon and tortoise-shell were also obtained; black slaves were purchased from various savage tribes; elephants were hunted by the natives for food; and ivory
- ↑ The junks from Annam, as it appears, ploughed round the Malay peninsula to Galle; Hirth, China and the Roman Orient, 1885, p. 178. The Cingalese took no active part in the trade!; Tennant, Ceylon, i, p. 568 (ibid.).
- ↑ Cosmas, op. cit., xi. His own trade seems to have lain chiefly between Adule and Malabar. In this age all the southern regions eastward of the Nile were commonly referred to as India; and that river was often named as the boundary between Africa and Asia. Hence the Nile was said to rise in India; Procopius, De Aedific., vi, 1, etc.
- ↑ Now Somaliland.
