But the most interesting passages in the narrative of Abou-zeyd are those which allude to the portion of Ceylon which served as the emporium for the active and opulent trade of which the island was then, in every sense of the word, the centre.  Gibbon, on no other ground than its “capacious harbour,” pronounces Trincomalie to be the port which received and dismissed the fleets of the East and West.[1] But the nautical grounds are even stronger than the historical for regarding this as improbable;—­the winds and the currents, as well as its geographical position, render Trincomalie difficult of access to vessels coming from the Red Sea or the Persian Gulf; and it is evident from the narrative of Soleyman and Ibn Wahab, that ships availing themselves of the monsoons to cross the Indian Ocean, crept along the shore to Cape Comorin; and passed close by Adam’s Bridge to reach their destined ports.[2]

[Footnote 1:  Decline and Fall, ch. xl.]

[Footnote 2:  ABOU-ZEYD, vol. i. p. 128; REINAUD, Discours; &c., pp. lx.—­lxix.; Introd. ABOULFEDA, p. cdxii.]

An opinion has been advanced by Bertolacci that the entrepot was Mantotte, at the northern extremity of the Gulf of Manaar.  Presuming that the voyages both ways were made through the Manaar channel, he infers that the ships of Arabia and India, rather than encounter the long delay of waiting for the change of the monsoon to effect the passage, would prefer to “flock to the Straits of Manaar, and those which, from their size, could not pass the shallow water, would be unloaded, and their merchandise trans-shipped into other vessels, as they arrived from the opposite coast, or deposited in stores to await an opportunity of conveyance."[1] Hence Mantotte, he concludes, was the station chosen for such combined operations.

[Footnote 1:  BERTOLACCI’S Ceylon, pp. 18,19.]

But Bertolacci confines his remarks to the Arabian and Indian crafts alone:  he leaves out of consideration the ships of the largest size called in the Periplus [Greek:  kolandiophonta], which kept up the communication between the west and east coast of India, in the time of the Romans, and he equally overlooks the great junks of the Chinese, which, by aid of the magnetic compass[1], made bold passages from Java to Malabar, and from Malabar to Oman,—­vessels which (on the authority of an ancient Arabic MS.) Reinaud says carried from four to five hundred men, with arms and naphtha, to defend themselves against the pirates of India.[2]

[Footnote 1:  The knowledge of the mariner’s compass probably possessed by the Chinese prior to the twelfth century, is discussed by KLAPROTH in his “Lettre a M. le Baron Humboldt sur l’invention de la boussole.”  Paris, 1834.]