which the natives and traders at this day call Tibbar. Next came a pack of 24,000 Indian dogs, all Asiatics, from the peninsula of India, followed by a prodigious number of foreign animals, both beasts and birds, paroquets, and other birds of Ethiopia, carried in cages; 130 Ethiopian sheep, 300 Arabian, and 20 from the Isle Nubia *[1]; 26 Indian buffaloes, white as snow, and eight from Ethiopia; three brown bears, and a white one, which last must have been from the north of Europe; 14 leopards, 16 panthers, four lynxes, one giraffa, and a rhinoceros of Ethiopia.
When we reflect upon this prodigious mixture of animals, all so easily procured at one time, without preparation, we may imagine, that the quantity of merchandises, for common demand, which accompanied them, must have been in the proper proportion.
The current of trade ran towards Alexandria with the greatest impetuosity, all the articles of luxury of the East were to be found there. Gold and silver, which were sent formerly to Tyre, came now down to the Isthmus (for Tyre was no more) by a much shorter carriage, thence to Memphis, whence it was sent down the Nile to Alexandria. The gold from the west and south parts of the Continent reached the same port with much less time and risk, as there was now no Red Sea to pass; and here was found the merchandise of Arabia and India in the greatest profusion.
- ↑ * This is probably from Atbara, or the old name of the island of Meroë, which had received that last name only as late as Cambyses.
- This is probably from Atbara, or the old name of the island of Meroë, which had received that last name only as late as Cambyses.
