An exploit so adventurous and so triumphant, rendered Hippalus the Columbus of his age, and his countrymen, to perpetuate his renown, called the winds which he had mastered by his name.[1] His discovery gave a new direction to navigation, it altered the dimensions and build of the ships frequenting those seas [2], and imparted so great an impulse to trade, that within a very brief period it became a subject of apprehension at Rome, lest the empire should be drained of its specie to maintain the commerce with India.  Silver to the value of nearly a million and a half sterling, being annually required to pay for the spices, gems, pearls, and silks, imported through Egypt.[3] An extensive acquaintance was now acquired with the sea-coast of India, and the great work of Pliny, compiled less than fifty years after the discovery of Hippalus, serves to attest the additional knowledge regarding Ceylon which had been collected during the interval.

[Footnote 1:  Periplus, &c., HUDSON, p. 32; PLINY, lib. vi, ch. 26.  A learned disquisition on the discovery of the monsoons will be found in VINCENT’s Commerce of the Ancients, vol. i. pp. 47, 253; vol. ii. pp. 49; 467; ROBERTSON’s India, sec. ii.]

[Footnote 2:  PLINY, lib. vi. ch. 24.]

[Footnote 3:  PLINY, lib. vi. ch. 26.  The nature of this rich trade is fully described by the author of the Periplus of the Erythrean Sea, who was himself a merchant engaged in it.]

Pliny, writing in the first century, puts aside the fabulous tales previously circulated concerning the island[1]; he gives due credit to the truer accounts of Onesicritus and Megasthenes, and refers to the later works of ERATOSTHENES and ARTEMIDORUS[2] the geographers, as to its position, its dimensions, its cities, its natural productions, and as to the ignorance of navigation exhibited by its inhabitants.  All this, he says, was recorded by former writers, but it had fallen to his lot to collect information from natives of Ceylon who had visited Rome during his own time under singular circumstances.  A ship had been despatched to the coast of Arabia to collect the Red Sea revenues, but having been caught by the monsoon it was carried to Hippuros, the modern Kudra-mali, in the north-west of Ceylon, near the pearl banks of Manaar.  Here the officer in command was courteously received by the king, who, struck with admiration of the Romans and eager to form an alliance with them, despatched an embassy to Italy, consisting of a Raja and suite of three persons.[3]

[Footnote 1:  I have not thought it necessary to advert to the romance of JAMBULUS, the scene of which has been conjectured, but without any justifiable grounds, to be laid in Ceylon; and which is strangely incorporated with the authentic work of DIODORUS SICULUS, written in the age of Augustus.  DIODORUS professes to give it as an account of the recent discovery of an island to which it refers; a fact sufficiently