. China, her history, diplomacy, and commerce, from the earliest times to the present day . by sea in the way of trade. From allthis we may gather a tolerably accurate notionof what the ancient land commerce of Chinamust have been. For clearness sake I use themodern names of some places. The Phoenicians, Carthaginians, and Syrianswere already old hands at conducting sea tradewhen China under the Han dynasty first foundherself with an unbroken line of coast, and it isabundantly clear from the works of Pliny andPtolemy that an active trade between Alexan-dria and the Far East had already been in
. China, her history, diplomacy, and commerce, from the earliest times to the present day . by sea in the way of trade. From allthis we may gather a tolerably accurate notionof what the ancient land commerce of Chinamust have been. For clearness sake I use themodern names of some places. The Phoenicians, Carthaginians, and Syrianswere already old hands at conducting sea tradewhen China under the Han dynasty first foundherself with an unbroken line of coast, and it isabundantly clear from the works of Pliny andPtolemy that an active trade between Alexan-dria and the Far East had already been in exist-ence for some centuries before our era. Katti-gara was the extreme point known to the RedSea navigators, and of course each specialist hashis own theory as to whether Rangoon, Singapore,Canton, or some other modern mart is is also a knotty point to decide whether King Antuns messengers already mentionedreached China in 166 by way of Rangoonor by way of Faifo in Annam: I havewandered on foot over and examined both theseplaces, and also inspected nearly every business. 100] INDIAN OCEAN TRADE 49 port of importance on the coasts of Burma,Siam, the Malay Peninsula, and Indo-China,besides reading up the special ancient lore ofeach place. Conditions of tide, sandbanks, cur-rent, alluvion, etc., change with each generation,just as do the vicissitudes of government. Alltrade ports become so because the embouchureof some great river facilitates distribution, be-cause the anchorage is spacious and safe, or forother similar reasons ; and the num-ber of suchdesirable sites must then, as now, have beenlimited to a narrow choice. I am disposed tothink that trade went on between the Syrianmerchants and the natives exactly as it doesnow, and probably at most of the same places,between Canton and the coasts of India; butas the Burmese, Annamese, and Siamese as wenow know them had not then reached thecountries in which we at present find them ;the Arabs had not
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