Although nearly the whole of the European trade with the East has, since the time of Vasco de Gama, been conducted by sea round the Cape of Good Hope, caravans through Arabia and Asia Minor and along the shores of the Red Sea, as well as by the more frequented route of the valley of Mesopotamia and the River Euphrates to the Persian Gulf, have never, since the days of Herodotus, altogether ceased. Indeed, during the reign of Elizabeth, and for sometime afterwards, many English merchants preferred the Euphrates route to the sea voyage, the course they then adopted, being apparently through Syria or Asia Minor to Bir, where a fleet of boats or barges, resembling those described by the Father of History, was at all seasons ready to convey them and their merchandise down the Euphrates to Hillah, near the site of Ancient Babylon, or by Mosul to Baghdad, the chief Eastern centre of commerce during the early part of the Middle Ages. From Baghdad their course was down the Tigris to Bussorah, where they embarked in native sailing-vessels for various parts of India. [Sidenote: East India Company establish a Tátar post between Constantinople and Baghdad.] An overland route between Europe and India had thus from time immemorial been sustained; and, though there was no established service between England and the East until a comparatively recent period, the East India Company, from the time they first became possessors of land in India, frequently sent despatches by the way of the Persian Gulf, thus creating at length a regular monthly communication between Constantinople and Baghdad, by Tátars, maintained at the cost of the Indian Government. Thus, at last, private letters as well as official despatches, were transmitted by these means, while, on important occasions, special despatches were forwarded by the same route at other than the monthly periods. This, so far as the East India Company was concerned, was the original, and the only official overland line of communication; and so it continued to be till it was superseded by the route through Egypt. Another generation may see it resumed by an iron highway.[293] [Sidenote: First public meeting in London to promote steam communication with India, 1822.] [Sidenote: Captain Johnston.]