so thoroughly, that not a single grain of it could be clandestinely exported.  The intercourse between this port and Kane was regular; and besides this, it was frequented by such ships as arrived from India too late in the season:  here they continued during the unfavourable monsoon, exchanging muslins, corn, and oil, for frankincense.  A small island, which is supposed to be the modern Mazeira, was visited by vessels from Kane to collect or purchase tortoise-shell:  the priests in the island are represented in the Periplus as wearing aprons made of the fibres of the cocoa tree:  this is the earliest mention of this tree.

Mocandon, the extreme point south of the Gulf of Persia, was the land from which the Arabians, (to use a maritime phrase) took their departure, with various superstitious observances, imploring a blessing on their intended voyage, and setting adrift a small toy, rigged like a ship, which, if dashed to pieces, was supposed to be accepted by the god of the ocean, instead of their ship.

It is impossible to determine from the Periplus, whether the author was personally acquainted with the navigation, ports, and trade of the Gulf of Persia:  the probability is that he was not, as he mentions only two particulars connected with it; the pearl fishery, and the town of Apologus, a celebrated mart at the mouth of the Euphrates; the pearl fishery he describes as extending from Mocandon to Bahrain.  Apologus is the present Oboleh, on the canal that leads from the Euphrates to Basra.

If the author of the Periplus did not enter the Gulf of Persia, he certainly stretched over, with the monsoon, either to Karmania, or directly to Scindi, or to the Gulf of Cambay; for at these places the minuteness of information which distinguishes the journal again appears.

Omana in Persia is the first mart described; it lay in the province of Gadrosia, but as it is not mentioned by Nearchus, who found Arabs in most other parts of the province, we may conclude that it was founded after his time.  The trade between this place and Baragaza in India, was regular and direct, and the goods brought from the latter to the former, seems afterwards to have been sent to Oboleh at the head of the Gulf; the imports were brass, sandal-wood; timber, of what kind is not specified; horn, ebony; this is the first port the trade of which included ebony and sandal-wood:  frankincense was imported from Kane.  The exports to Arabia and Baragaza were purple cloth for the natives; wine, a large quantity of dates, gold, slaves, and pearls of an inferior quality.