PROGRESS of TRADE with that COUNTRY CAPE OF GOOD HOPE. With an APPENDIX, CONTAINING Obfervations on the Civil Policy-the Laws and Judicial (1721-1593) By WILLIAM ROBERTSON, D.D. F.R.S.Ed. PRINCIPAL OF THE UNIVERSITY, AND HISTORIOGRAPHER THE FOURTH EDITION. LONDON: Printed by A. Strahan, Printers-Street, FOR T. CADELL AND W. DAVIES, IN THE STRAND; AND E. BALFOUR, EDINBURGH. PREFACE. THE perufal of Major Rennell's Memoir for illustrating his Map of Indoftan, one of the most valuable geographical treatises that has appeared in any age or country, gave rife to the following work. It fuggested to me the idea of examining more fully than I had done in the Introductory Book to my History of America, into the knowledge which the Ancients had of India, and of confidering what is certain, what is obfcure, and what is fabulous, in the accounts of that country which they have handed down to us. In undertaking this inquiry, I had originally no other object than my own amusement and instruction: But in carrying it on, and confulting with diligence the authors of antiquity, some facts, hitherto unobferved, and many which had not been examined with proper attention, occurred; new views opened; my ideas gradually extended and became more interefting; until, at length, I imagined that the refult of my researches might prove amusing and inftructive to others, by exhibiting fuch a view of the various modes in which intercourse with India had been carried on from the earliest times, as might fhew how much that |