CONCERNING ANCIENT INDIA. 65

I have been induced to bestow this attention, s E CTin tracing the course delineated in the Circumnavi- 11.gation of the Erythraean Sea, because the Authorof it is the first ancient writer to whom we areindebted for any knowledge of the eastern coastof the great peninsula of India, -or of the countrieswhich lie beyond it. To Strabo , who composedhis great work on geography in the reign ofAugustus , India , particularly the most easternparts of it , was little known. He begins hisdescription of it with requesting the indulgenceof his readers, on account of the scanty informa-tion he could obtain with respect to a country soremote, which Europeans had seldom visited, andmany of them transiently only, in the functions ofmilitary service He observes, that even com-merce had contributed little towards an accurateinvestigation of the country, as few of the mer-chants from Egypt and the Arabian Gulf had eversailed as far as the Ganges; and from men soilliterate, intelligence that merited a full degree ofconfidence could hardly be expected. His descrip- .tions of India, particularly its interior provinces,are borrowed almost entirely from the Memoirs^,of Alexander’s Officers, with some slender addi- **tions from more recent accounts, and these so fewin number, and sometimes so inaccurate, as tofurnish a striking proof of the small progress whichthe ancients had made, from the time of Alexander,in exploring that country. When an author, pos-sessed of such discernment and industry as Strabo,

\yho visited in person several distant regions that

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