omputed) from their respective countries,
the silk merchants of China, who had collected in their voyages aloes,
cloves, nutmeg, and sandal wood, maintained a free and beneficial
commerce with the inhabitants of the Persian Gulf. The subjects of the
great king exalted, without a rival, his power and magnificence: and the
Roman, who confounded their vanity by comparing his paltry coin with
a gold medal of the emperor Anastasius, had sailed to Ceylon, in an
Aethiopian ship, as a simple passenger. [72]

[Footnote 67: Procopius, Persic. l. i. c. 20, l. ii. c. 25; Gothic.
l. iv. c. 17. Menander in Excerpt. Legat. p. 107. Of the Parthian or
Persian empire, Isidore of Charax (in Stathmis Parthicis, p. 7, 8, in
Hudson, Geograph. Minor. tom. ii.) has marked the roads, and Ammianus
Marcellinus (l. xxiii. c. 6, p. 400) has enumerated the provinces. *
Note: See St. Martin, Mem. sur l'Armenie, vol. ii. p. 41.--M.]

[Footnote 68: The blind admiration of the Jesuits confounds the
different periods of the Chinese history. They are more critically
distinguished by M. de Guignes, (Hist. des Huns, tom. i. part i. in
the Tables, part ii. in the Geography. Memoires de l'Academie des
Inscriptions, tom. xxxii. xxxvi. xlii. xliii.,) who discovers the
gradual progress of the truth of the annals and the extent of the
monarchy, till the Christian aera. He has searched, with a curious eye,
the connections of the Chinese with the nations of the West; but
these connections are slight, casual, and obscure; nor did the Romans
entertain a suspicion that the Seres or Sinae possessed an empire not
inferior to their own. * Note: An abstract of the various opinions of
the learned modern writers, Gosselin, Mannert, Lelewel, Malte-Brun,
Heeren, and La Treille, on the Serica and the Thinae of the ancients,
may be found in the new edition of Malte-Brun, vol. vi. p. 368,
382.--M.]

[Footnote 69: The roads from China to Persia and Hindostan may be
investigated in the relations of Hackluyt and Thevenot, the ambassadors
of Sharokh, Anthony Jenkinson, the Pere Greuber, &c. See likewise
Hanway's Travels, vol. i. p. 345--357. A communication through Thibet
has been lately explored by the English sovereigns of Bengal.]

[Footnote 70: For the Chinese navigation to Malacca and Achin, perhaps
to Ceylon, see Renaudot, (on the two Mahometan Travellers, p. 8--11,
13--17, 141--157;) Dampier, (vol. ii. p. 136;) the Hist. Philosophique
des deux Indes, (tom. i. p. 98,) and