till later apparently that navigation was extended as far as that large and productive island, in which on several occasions Roman coins have come to light. But coins are found only by way of exception beyond Cape Comorin and Ceylon,[274] and hardly has even the coast of Coromandel and the mouth of the Ganges, to say nothing of the Further Indian peninsula and China, maintained regular commercial intercourse with the Occidentals. Chinese silk was certainly already at an early period sold regularly to the West, but, as it would appear, exclusively by the land-route, and through the medium partly of the Indians of Barygaza, partly and chiefly of the Parthians; the Silk-people or the Seres (from the Chinese name of silk Sr) of the Occidentals were the inhabitants of the Tarim-basin to the north-west of Thibet, whither the Chinese brought their silk, and the Parthian intermediaries jealously guarded the traffic thither. By sea, certainly, individual mariners reached accidentally or by way of exploration at least to the east coast of Further India and perhaps still farther; the port of Cattigara known to the Romans at the beginning of the second century A.D. was one of the Chinese coast-towns, perhaps Hang-chow-foo at the mouth of the Yang-tse-kiang. The report of the Chinese annals that in A.D. 166 an embassy of the emperor Antun of Ta-(that is Great) Tsin (Rome) landed in Ji-nan (Tonkin), and thence by the land-route arrived at the capital Lo-yang (or Ho-nan-foo on the middle Hoang-ho) to the emperor Hwan-ti, may warrantably be referred to Rome and to Marcus Antoninus. This event, however, and what the Chinese authorities mention as to a similar appearance of the Romans in their country in the course of the third century, can hardly be understood of public missions, since as to these Roman statements would hardly have been wanting; but possibly individual captains may have passed with the Chinese court as messengers of their government. These connections had perceptible consequences only in so far as the earlier tales regarding the procuring of silk gradually gave way to better knowledge. CHAPTER XIII. THE AFRICAN PROVINCES. [Sidenote: North Africa and the Berber stock.]