The most important points respecting the state of Eastern commerce in the age of Cosmas, as established by his information, are the following:  that Ceylon was the central mart between the commerce of Europe, Africa, and the west of India, and the east of India and China; that none of the foreign merchants who visited Ceylon were accustomed to proceed to the eastern regions of Asia, but received their silks, spices, &c. as they were imported into Ceylon; and that, as cloves are particularly specified as having been imported into Ceylon from China, the Chinese at this period must have traded with the Moluccas on the one hand, and with Ceylon on the other.

Cosmas notices the great abundance of silk in Persia, which he attributes to the short land carriage between it and China.

In our account of the very early trade of Carthage, a branch of it was described from Herodotus, which the Carthaginians carried on, without the use or intervention of words, with a remote African tribe.  Of a trade conducted in a similar manner, Cosmas gives us some information; according to him, the king of the Axumites, on the east coast of Africa, exchanged iron, salt, and cattle, for pieces of gold with an inland nation, whom he describes as inhabiting Ethiopia.  It may be remarked in confirmation of the accuracy, both of Herodotus and of Cosmas, in what they relate on this subject, and as an illustration and proof of the permanency and power of custom among barbarous nations, that Dr. Shaw and Cadamosto (in Purchas’s Pilgrimage) describe the same mode of traffic as carried on in their times by the Moors on the west coast of Africa, with the inhabitants of the banks of the Niger.

In the middle of the sixth century, an immense and expensive fleet, fitted out by the Emperor Justinian for the purpose of invading the Vandals of Africa, gives us, in the detail of its preparation and exploits, considerable insight into the maritime state of the empire at this period.  Justinian assembled at Constantinople 500 transports of various sizes, which it is not easy exactly to calculate; the presumption derived from the accounts we have is, that the smallest were 30 tons, and the largest 500 tons; and that the aggregate tonnage of the whole amounted to about 100,000 tons:  an immense fleet, even compared with the fleets of modern times.  On board of this fleet there were 35,000 seamen and soldiers, and 5000 horses, besides arms, engines, stores, and an adequate supply of water and provisions, for a period, probably, of two or three months.  Such were the transports:  they were accompanied and protected by 92 light brigantines, for gallies were no longer used in the Mediterranean; on board of these vessels were 2000 rowers.  The celebrated Belisarius was the commander-in-chief, both of the land and sea forces.  The course of this numerous and formidable fleet was directed by the master-galley in which he sailed; this was conspicuous by the redness of its sails during the day, and by