APPENDIX.

259

swallows up the wealth of every other country, thatflows incessantly towards it, and from which itnever returns 8 . According to the accounts which1 have given of the cargoes anciently importedfrom India, they appear to have consisted ofnearly the same articles with those of the invest-ments in our own times; and whatever differencewe may observe in them seems to have arisen»not so much from any diversity in the nature ofthe commodities which the Indians prepared forsale , as from a variety in the tastes, or in thewants, of the nations which demanded them.

II. Another proof of the early and high civili-zation of the people of India, may be deducedfrom considering their political constitution andform of government. The Indians trace back thehistory of their own country through an immensesuccession of ages, and assert, that all Asia, fromthe mouth of the Indus on the west, to the con-fines of China on the,east, and from the mountainsof Thibet on the north, to Cape Comorin on thesouth , formed a vast empire , subject to onemighty sovereign, under whom ruled several he-reditary Princes and Rajahs. But their chronology,which measures the life of man in ancient timesby thousands of years,, and computes the lengthof the several periods, during which it supposesthe world to have existed, by millions, is sowildly extravagant , as not to merit any serious

See NOTE III.