4th June.
'Tummy years ago the Hakluyt Society published a translation of the travels of Barbosa in' the Indian Ocean. This book was first written in Portuguese, but Barbosa served theSpaniardsand became naturalised in Spain. His book apeared also in Spanish and has been translated into English during the present century. He wrote about sixteen years after VascodeGamaarrived in india after rounding the Cape. Ihe trade he describes is that of East Africa and. the Malabar coast, but really embraces that of Burma, Malacca, Java, and China also. Who Portuguese arrived as a new commercial nation desirous to take part in the trade already in existence. Their predecessors had been the Arabs, whom they called the Moors. Proceeding from port to port eastward Barbosa mentions the imports and exports at each and renders it possible for us to judge with, fair accuracy what was the state of trade at the beginning of the 16th century. Cottons, velvet from Mecca, quicksilver, vermilion, silks, saffron, coral wrought and in strings, with rose water and opium were'all in request. It was a century before opium' smoking commenced, but it was becoming more and more in demand as a drug. Rose water was taken from Mecca in small bottles and sold by weight with the bottles and various stuts were conveyed from Cambay near the modern Bombay. All these articles, the author, tells us, fetched a high price in more eastern ports.
In that age the opium of Aden realised a higher price than that of Cambay. In the ancient world. when Hippocrates founded the Greek medical school and when Celsus and Scribonius Largus wrote in Latin on Materia Medica the only producing country for opium was Asia Minor. But when the Caliphs encouraged navigation in the Eastern seas the Arabs established poppy gardens at Aden for the convenience of their trade. 'I'hen later on, they did the same in Bombay at some unknown time previous to the discovery of the ocean passage to India by the Portuguese. When giving an account of the trade at'Tenasserim and Siam Barbosa remarks on the maw Moorish ships collected there. Opium, scarlet cloth, and copper were in demand in Pegu. Burma had no sea coast at that time but goods ascended the Irrawaddy to Ava and occupied eight days in getting
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.