to the flats of India, Arabia, and the adjoining coasts, to which they
carried various merchandizes in great ships; and sailing to the north-
west they came to certain flats which are covered by the tide, and left
bare by the ebb, where they caught many _tunnies_ of great size; which
fishing turned out to their great profit, as they were very abundant and
much esteemed[33].

Alexander, who flourished 324 years before Christ, travelled from Europe
into Asia and Africa, passed through Armenia, Assyria, Persia, and
Bactria; whence he descended by the mountains of Imaus and the vallies of
Parapomissus, into India, and prepared a navy on the river Indus, with
which he passed into the ocean. He there turned by the lands of Gedrosia,
Caramania, and Persia, to the great city of Babylon, leaving the command
of his fleet to Onesicratus and Nearchus, who sailed through the straits
of the Persian Sea and up the river Euphrates, discovering the whole
coast between the Indus and that river.

After the death of Alexander, Ptolemy became king of Egypt, who by some
was reputed to have been the bastard son of Philip, the father of
Alexander: He, imitating the before named kings, Sesostris and Darius,
caused dig a canal from the branch of the Nile which passed by Pelusium,
now by the city of Damieta[34]. This canal of Ptolemy was an hundred feet
broad and thirty feet deep, and extended ten or twelve leagues in length,
till it came to the _bitter wells_. He meant to have continued it to the
Red Sea; but desisted on the idea that the Red Sea was three cubits
higher than the land of Egypt, and would have overflowed all the country,
to its entire ruin.

Ptolemy Philadelphus, in the year 277 before Christ, changed the
direction of the Indian traffic. The goods from Europe, by his orders,