Such was the scanty knowledge regarding India communicated to Europe by those who had followed the footsteps of conquest into that remote region; and although eighteen centuries elapsed from the death of Alexander the Great before another European power sought to establish its dominion in the East, a new passion had been early implanted, the cultivation of which was in the highest degree favourable to the acquisition and diffusion of geographical knowledge.  In an age before the birth of history[1], the adventurous Phoenicians, issuing from the Red Sea, in their ships, had reached the shores of India, and centuries afterwards their experienced seamen piloted the fleets of Solomon in search of the luxuries of the East.[2]

[Footnote 1:  A compendious account of the early trade between India and the countries bordering on the Mediterranean will be found in PARDESSUS’s Collection des Lois Maritimes anterieures au XVIII^e siecle, tom. i. p. 9.]

[Footnote 2:  It has been conjectured, and not without reason, that it may possibly have been from Ceylon and certainly from Southern India that the fleets of Solomon were returning when “once in every three years came the ships of Tarshish, bringing gold and silver, ivory, apes, and peacocks.”—­I Kings, x. 22, II Chron., xx. 21.  An exposition of the reasons for believing that the site of Tarshish may be recognised in the modern Point de Galle will be found in a subsequent chapter descriptive of that ancient emporium.  See also Note A at the end of this chapter.]

Egypt, under the Ptolemies, became the seat of that opulent trade which it had been the aim of Alexander the Great to divert to it from Syria.  Berenice was built on the Red Sea, as an emporium for the ships engaged in Indian voyages, and Alexandria excelled Tyre in the magnitude and success of her mercantile operations.

The conquest of Egypt by Augustus, so far from checking, served to communicate a fresh impulse to the intercourse with India, whence all that was costly and rare was collected in wanton profusion, to minister to the luxury of Rome.  A bold discovery of the same period imparted an entirely new character to the navigation of the Indian Ocean.  The previous impediment to trade had been the necessity of carrying it on in small vessels, that crept cautiously along the windings of the shore, the crews being too ignorant and too timid to face the dangers of the open sea.  But the courage of an individual at length solved the difficulty, and dissipated the alarm.  Hippalus, a seaman in the reign of Claudius, observing the steady prevalence of the monsoons[1], which blew over the Indian Ocean alternately from east to west, dared to trust himself to their influence, and departing from the coast of Arabia, he stretched fearlessly across the unknown deep, and was carried by the winds to Muziris, a port on the coast of Malabar, the modern Mangalore.

[Footnote 1:  Arabic “maussam.”  I believe the root belongs to a dialect of India, and signifies “seasons.”  VINCENT fixes the discovery of the monsoons by Hippalus about the year A.D. 47, although it admits of no doubt that the periodical prevalence of the winds must have been known long before, if not partially taken advantage of by the seamen of Arabia and India. Periplus, &c., vol. ii, pp. 24—­57.]