NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS.

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Romania , at the southern extremity of the peninsula ofMalacca, is the point of Bragu, at the mouth of the greatriver Ava; near to which he places Zaba, supposed byM. D’Anville, and by Barros, Decad, ii. liv. vi. c. i. tobe situated on the strait of Sincapura or Malacca. TheMagnus Sinus of Ptolemy he holds to be the same withthe Gulf of Martaban , not the Gulf of Siam, accordingto M. D’Anville’s decision. The position of Cattigara, ashe endeavours to prove, corresponds to that of Mergui,a considerable port on the west coast of the kingdom ofSiam, and that Thinæ, or Sinæ Metropolis , which M.D’Anville removes as far as Sin-hoa, in the kingdom ofCochin-China, is situated on the same river with Mergui ,and now bears the name of Tana-serini. The IbadijInsula- of Ptolemy, which M. D’Anville determines to beSumatra, he contends , is one of that cluster of small isleswhich lie off this part of the coast of Siam; p. 157—>148.According to M. GosTellinY systemthe ancients neversailed through the Straits of Malacca, had no knowledgeof the island of Sumatra, and were altogether unacquaint-ed with the Eastern Ocean. If to any of my readersthese opinions appear to be well founded, the navigationand commerce of the ancients in India must be circumscrib-ed within limits still more confined than those which Ihave allotted to them. From the Ayeen Akbery, vol. ii.p. 7. we learn that Cheen was an ancient name of thekingdom of Pegu; as that country borders upon Ava,where M. Goffellin places the Great Promontory, this nearresemblance of names may appear, perhaps, to confirmhis opinion that Sinæ Metropolis was situated on this coast,and not so far East as M. D’Anville has placed' it.

As Ptolemy’s geography of this eastern division of Asiais more erroneous , obscure, and contradictory than in anyother part of his work, and as ail the manuscripts of it,both Greek and Latin, are remarkably incorrect in the twochapters which contain the description of the countries be-yond the Ganges, M. D’Anville, in his Memoir concerningthe limits of the world known to the ancients beyond the

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