io AN HISTORICAL DISQUISITION

SECT.

I.

all the other articles which composed the cargoesof the Jewish Ihips. This opinion which the accu-rate researches of M. DAnville rendered highlyprobable”, seems now to be established with theutmost certainty by a late learned traveller; who,by his knowledge of the monsoons in the ArabianGulf, and his attention to the ancient mode ofnavigation, both in that sea and along the Africancoast, has not only accounted for the extraordinarylength of time which the fleets of Solomon tookingoing and returning, but has shown, from cir-cumstances mentioned concerning the voyage, thatit was not made to any place in India TheJews, then, we may conclude, have no title tobe reckoned among the nations which carried onintercourse with India by sea; and if, from defer-ence to the sentiments of some respectable authors,their claim were to be admitted, we know withcertainty, that the commercial effort which theymade in the reign of Solomon was merely a tran-sient one, and that they quickly returned to theirformer state of unsocial seclusion from the rest ofmankind.

From collecting the scanty information whichhistory affords, concerning the most early attemptsto open a commercial intercourse with India, Inow proceed, with more certainty and greaterconfidence, to trace the progress of communicationwith that country, under the guidance of authors

1! Dissert, fur le Pays d’Ophir, Mem. de Literal:, torn.xxx. p. 8;, 6m. I4 Bruce’s Travels, book ii. ch. 4.