THE WEALTH OF NATIONS.

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considerable degree. Upper Egypt extends itself nowhereabove a few miles from the Nile , and in Lower Egypt thatgreat river breaks itself into many different canals, which,with the assistance of a little art, seem to have afforded a com-munication by water-carriage, not only between all the greattowns, but between all the considerable villages, and even tomany farm-houses in the country; nearly in the same man-ner as the Rhine and the Maese do in Holland at present.The extent and easiness of this inland navigation was pro-bably one of the principal causes of the early improvementof Egypt .

The improvements in agriculture and manufactures seemlikewise to have been of very great antiquity in the provincesof Bengal in the East Indies, and in some of the Eastern pro-vinces of China ; though the great extent of this antiquity isnot authenticated by any histories of whose authority we, inthis part of the world, are well assured. In Bengal theGanges and several other great rivers form a great numberof navigable canals, in the same manner as the Nile does inEgypt . In the eastern provinces of China too, several greatrivers form, by their different branches, a multitude of canals,and by communicating with one another afford an inlandnavigation much more extensive than that either of the Nile or the Ganges , or perhaps than both of them put together.It is remarkable that neither the ancient Egyptians, nor theIndians, nor the Chinese , encouraged foreign commerce, butseem all to have derived their great opulence from this in-land navigation.

All the inland parts of Africa , and all that part of Asia which lies any considerable way north of the Euxine and Cas-pian seas, the ancient Scythia, the modern Tartary, and Si­ beria , seem in all ages of the world to have been in the samebarbarous and uncivilized state in which we find them at pre-sent. The sea of Tartary is the frozen ocean which admitsof no navigation, and though some of the greatest rivers inthe world run through that country, they are at too great adistance from one another to carry commerce and communi-cation through the greater part of it. There are in Africa none of those great inlets, such as the Baltic and Adriatic seas in Europe , the Mediterranean and Euxine seas in bothEurope and Asia , and the Gulfs of Arabia , Persia , India ,Bengal , and Siam , in Asia , to carry maritime commerce intothe interior parts of that great continent; and the great ri-