chapter 57

), after the navigator who first discovered the direct course across the sea, and it has been inferred from Pliny's words (VI. 23) that this pilot lived in the middle of the first century A.D. But Pliny's own account shows that, as we should expect, the progress from a coasting to a direct voyage was a gradual one, with several intermediate stages, in all of which the monsoon was more or less made use of. There was therefore no reason for naming the wind from the pilot who merely made the last step. Further though Pliny knows Hippalus as the local name of the monsoon wind in the eastern seas, he says nothing of its having been the name of the inventor of the direct course. The inference seems to be that Hippalos the pilot is the child of a seaman's yarn arising out of the local name of the monsoon wind, and that his presence in the Periplus and not in Pliny shows that the former writer is much later than the latter.

The merchant bound for Skythia (Sindh) before he reaches land, which lies low to the northward, meets the white water from the river Sinthos (Indus) and water snakes (