If we may credit Pliny, the Greek merchants of Egypt for some years after the discovery of the monsoon, did not venture further out to sea than was absolutely necessary, by crossing the widest part of the entry of the Persian Gulf, to reach Patala at the mouth of the Indus; but they afterwards found shorter routes, or rather stretched more to the south, so as to reach lower down on the coast of India:  they also enlarged their vessels, carried cargoes of greater value, and in order to beat off the pirates, which then as at present infested this part of the Indian coast, they put on board their vessels a band of archers.  Myos Hormos, or Berenice, was the port on the Red Sea from which they sailed; in forty days they arrived at Musiris, on the west coast of India.  The homeward passage was begun in December or January, when the north east monsoon commenced; this carried them to the entrance of the Red Sea, up which to their port they were generally favored by southerly winds.

As there is no good reason to believe that the ancients made regular voyages to India, previously to the discovery of the monsoons; yet, as it is an undoubted fact that some of the exclusive productions of that country, particularly cinnamon, were obtained by them, through their voyages on the Red Sea; it becomes an important and interesting enquiry, by what means these productions were brought to those places on this sea, from which the Romans obtained them.  In our opinion, the Arabians were the first who introduced Indian productions into the west from the earliest period to which history goes back, and they continued to supply the merchants who traded on the Red Sea with them, till, by the discovery of the monsoon, a direct communication was opened between that sea and India.

At least seventeen centuries before the Christian era, we have undoubted evidence of the traffic of the Arabians in the spices, &c. of India; for in the 27th chapter of Genesis we learn, that the Ishmaelites from Gilead conducted a caravan of camels laden with the spices of India, and the balsam and myrrh of Hadraumaut, in the regular course of traffic to Egypt for sale.  In the 30th chapter of Exodus, cinnamon, cassia, myrrh, frankincense, &c. are mentioned, some of which are the exclusive produce of India; these were used for religious purposes, but at the same time the quantities of them specified are so great, that it is evident they must have been easily obtained.  Spices are mentioned, along with balm and other productions of Canaan, in the present destined by Jacob for Joseph.  These testimonies from holy writ are perfectly in unison with what we learn from Herodotus; this author enumerates oriental spices as regularly used in Egypt for embalming the dead.