they formed commercial establishments in every country that had productions to export, and their vessels sailed between every sea-port from Sofala to Bab-el-Mandeb, and from Aden to Sumatra.[5] The “Moors,” who at the present day inhabit the coasts of Ceylon, are the descendants of these active adventurers; they are not purely Arabs in blood, but descendants from Arabian ancestors by intermarriage with the native races who embraced the religion of the Prophet.[6] The Singhalese epithet of “Marak-kala-minisu” or “Mariners,” describes at once their origin and occupation; but during the middle ages, when Ceylon was the Tyre of Asia, these immigrant traders became traders in all the products of the island, and the brokers through whose hands they passed in exchange for the wares of foreign countries.  At no period were they either manufacturers or producers in any department; their genius was purely commercial, and their attention was exclusively devoted to buying and selling what had been previously produced by the industry and ingenuity of others.  They were dealers in jewelry, connoisseurs in gems, and collectors of pearls; and whilst the contented and apathetic Singhalese in the villages and forests of the interior passed their lives in the cultivation of their rice-lands, and sought no other excitement than the pomp and ceremonial of their temples; the busy and ambitious Mahometans on the coast built their warehouses at the ports, crowded the harbours with their shipping, and collected the wealth and luxuries of the island, its precious stones, its dye-woods, its spices and ivory, to be forwarded to China and the Persian Gulf.

[Footnote 1:  MOUNTSTUART ELPHINSTONE, on the authority of Agatharchidos (as quoted by Diodorus and Photius), says, that “from all that appears in that author, we should conclude that two centuries before the Christian era, the trade (between India and the ports of Sabaea) was entirely in the hands of the Arabs.”—­Hist.  India, b. iii. c. x. p. 167.]

[Footnote 2:  Pliny, b. vi. c. 22.]

[Footnote 3: 

          “Omnis eo terrore AEgyptus et Indi
  Omnes Arabes vertebant terga Sabaei.”

VIRGIL, AEn. viii. 705.]

[Footnote 4:  ABOU-ZEYD, vol. i. p. xlii. cix.]

[Footnote 5:  VINCENT, vol. ii. p. 451.  The Moors of Ceylon are identical in race with “the Mopillees of the Malabar coast.”—­McKENZIE, Asiat.  Res., vol. vi. p. 430.]

[Footnote 6:  In a former work, “Christianity in Ceylon,” I was led, by incorrect information, to describe a section of the Moors as belonging to the sect of the Shiahs, and using the Persian language in the service of their mosques (c. i. note, p. 34).  There is reason to believe that at a former period there were Mahometans in Ceylon to whom this description would apply; but at the present day the Moors throughout the island are, I believe, universally Sonnees, belonging to one of the four orthodox sects called Shafees,