NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS.

207

remarkably with the narrative of the Chinese writers, andconfirms it. The Greeks, he fays, were deprived of Bac-tria by tribes or hordes of Scythian Nomades, who camefrom the country beyond the Jaxartes, and are known bythe names of Afij, Pasiani, Tachari, and Sacarauli; Strab.lib. xi. p. 779. A. The Nomades of the ancients werenations who, like the Tartars, subsisted entirely, as fhep»herds, without agriculture.

NOTE XVI. Sect. I. p. 59.

As the distance of Arfinoe, the modern Suez, from theNile , is considerably less than that between Berenice andCoptos, it was by this route that all the commodities im-ported into the Arabian Gulf, might have been conveyedwith most expedition and least expense into Egypt. But thenavigation of the Arabian Gulf, which even in the presentimproved state of nautical science is stow and difficult, wasin ancient times considered by the nations around it to beso extremely perilous, that it led them to give such namesto several of its promontories, bays, and harbours , asconvey a striking idea of the impression which the dreadof this danger had made upon their imagination. The entryinto the Gulf they called Bab elm an deb , the gate or port ofaffliction. To a harbour not far distant, they gave the nameof Mete , i. e. Death. A headland adjacent they calledGardes an , the Cape of Burial. Other denominations ofsimilar import are mentioned by the author to whom I amindebted for this information. Bruce’s Travels, vol. i.p. 442, &c. It is not surprising then, that the staple ofIndian trade should have been transferred from the north,cm extremity of the Arabian Gulf to Berenice, as by thischange a dangerous navigation was greatly shortened. Thisseems to have been the chief reason that induced Ptolemyto establish the port of communication with India at Bere-nice, as there were other harbours on the Arabian Gulfwhich were considerably nearer than it to the Nile. At a