Page:1909historyofdec04gibbuoft.djvu/288

246 THE DECLINE AND FALL [Chap, xl who frequented the fairs of Armenia and Nisibis ; but this trade, which in the intervals of truce was oppressed by avarice and jealousy, was totally interrupted by the long wars of the rival monarchies. The great king might proudly number Sogdiana, and even Serica, among the provinces of his empire ; but his real dominion was bounded by the Oxus, and his useful inter- course with the Sogdoites, beyond the river, depended on the pleasure of their conquerors, the white Huns and the Turks, who successively reigned over that industrious people. Yet the most savage dominion has not extirpated the seeds of agriculture and commerce in a region which is celebrated as one of the four gardens of Asia ; the cities of Samarcand and Bochara are ad- vantageously seated for the exchange of its various productions ; and their merchants purchased from the Chinese 69 the raw or manufactured silk which they transported into Persia for the use of the Roman empire. In the vain capital of China, the Sogdian caravans were entertained as the suppliant embassies of tributary kingdoms, and, if they returned in safety, the bold adventure was rewarded with exorbitant gain. But the difficult and perilous march from Samarcand to the first town of Shensi could not be performed in less than sixty, eighty, or one hundred days; as soon as they had passed the Jaxartes, they entered the desert ; and the wandering hords, unless they are restrained by armies and garrisons, have always considered the citizen and the traveller as the objects of lawful rapine. To escape the Tartar robbers and the tyrants of Persia, the silk caravans ex- plored a more southern road ; they traversed the mountains of Thibet, descended the streams of the Ganges or the Indus, and patiently expected, in the ports of Guzerat and Malabar, the annual fleets of the West. 70 But the dangers of the desert were empire, Isidore of Charax (in Stathmis Parthicis, p. 7, 8, in Hudson. Geograph. Minor, torn, ii.) has marked the roads, and Ammianus Marcellinus (1. xxiii. c. 6, p. 400) has enumerated the provinces. u9 The blind admiration of the Jesuits confounds the different periods of the Chinese history. They are more critically distinguished by M. de Guignes (Hist, des Huns, torn. i. part i. in the Tables, part ii. in the Geography, Memoires de l'Acad^mie des Inscriptions, torn, xxxii. xxxvi. xlii. xliii.), who discovers the gradual progress of the truth of the annals, and the extent of the monarchy, till the Chris- tian 8era. He has searched, with a curious eye, the connexions of the Chinese with the nations of the West ; but these connexions are slight, casual, and obscure ; nor did the Romans entertain a suspicion that the Seres or Sinas possessed an em- pire not inferior to their own. [Cp. Appendix 13.] 70 The roads from China to Persia and Hindostan may be investigated in the relations of Haokluyt and Th^venot (the ambassadors of Sharokh, Anthony Jen-