Nor were the designs of this great conqueror confined to an increase of facilities for conducting with greater rapidity and safety the commercial intercourse of the nations of the West, requiring, as these did for their daily wants, commodities India could alone supply. Alexander created new channels of trade, and fresh wants, and fresh hopes for each country he successively overcame. Instead of devastation and misery marking his progress through Syria and Asia Minor, these countries were greatly enriched by his sovereignty, while their inhabitants secured more freedom and prosperity than they had ever enjoyed under their native princes. Egypt, under the dynasty of the Ptolemies, the first founder of which, Ptolemy the son of Lagos, was one of Alexander’s most trusted generals, obtained a commercial pre-eminence it had not enjoyed during any previous period of its history. Again, when Alexander advanced into the district now known as the Panjâb, he conferred many advantages on the natives, and imparted to them much practical and valuable knowledge. Almost everywhere he founded Greek cities or colonies (Plutarch gives their number as seventy), diffusing the manners and customs of his own people over the vast tracts of land from the temple of Ammon in the Lybian oasis to the banks of the Indus. Thus he brought into contact with his own refined and civilized Greeks, not merely Oriental nations that were highly gifted in their own way, but also the semi-barbarous tribes of many lands, teaching them the advantages of commercial intercourse, and extending by its influence the comforts which habits of industry can alone bestow, together with the many blessings civilization confers. His conquests, like the discoveries of Columbus, made known the existence of rich regions before unsuspected, and countries where millions of the human race could find remunerative occupation. [Sidenote: The gain of commerce by his conquests.] Articles of commerce, of which the Western World had had no previous experience, were thus brought to light. Rice produced from irrigated fields; a cotton tree of a superior growth, which, from its fine tissues, furnished the materials for the manufacture of paper; various descriptions of spices and opium; wine made from rice, and from the juice of palms;[258] wool from the great bombax tree;[259] shawls made of the fine hair of the Thibetan goats; silken tissues of various kinds; oil from the white sesamum; and perfumes of the richest description. These and other products, for the most part new to the Western World, soon became articles of universal commerce, while some of them were transported to Arabia, and thence to the shores of the Mediterranean. [Sidenote: The spread of knowledge.]