From the close of the reign of the Ptolemies, to the Portuguese discoveries in India, we have but a single record of eastern commerce, given by a trader named Sopater, to Cosmas, and inserted in his Typographia Christiana. Every country, from China to Ethiopia, is mentioned, and the produce or merchandise which each sent or received, enumerated. The centre of this traffic was Ceylon, by whose merchants and shipping it was carried on. That island thus possessed commercial prosperity of the first order, while the great empires were sinking into that decrepitude which invited the northern invasion, and facilitated the outbursts of Saracenic enthusiasm. This commerce was not carried on by the Cingalese, but by _strangers_, settled in the country, who had kings; occupied the maritime places; were of a different religion, and had temples.--Who could those strangers be? Ceylon was never invaded by a foreign state, or overrun by a foreign race. The struggle of Buddhism and Brahminism had not extended to that island (at the time in question, Buddhism had been expelled from the continent). These strangers could not have been from India--they were not Greeks or Romans. Had they been Chinese, they would have been mentioned as such, and have been, like the Cingalese, Buddhists. They were not accidental rovers. Sopater mentions various peculiarities--one, a hyacinth in one of the temples, which, when illumined by the rays of the sun, radiated with light. Does not this recall the emerald emitting light in the Temple of Hercules at Tyre?[159] Another coincidence may be found in the name of the cocoa-nut, as given by Cosmas (Argillia), with that of the cocoa-nut tree (Argel), still used by the Arabs. “There was,” he says, “a church of Christians.” These had therefore temples and churches; their presbyter was ordained in Persia, whence they had their deacons and ecclesiastical chiefs. In the mountains above Mesopotamia, to this day there are Jews and Christians intermingled, the Christians avowing themselves converted Jews, the Jews declaring themselves apostate Hebrews. This recalls the old Jewish and Phœnician association of the time of Solomon, and their common expedition to Darohish.