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Isle, while Argyre, the Isle of Silver, was opposite to the mouth of the Ganges. Pomponius Mela places the land of the Seres—the name by which the inhabitants of northern China were known—south of Tabis and between that headland and India. These statements, though they represent nothing more than a vague groping after the truth, are interesting because they mark the dawn of a pcrccption that beyond the Ganges there lay further to the east certain inhabited lands, and because they show that in Pomponius Mela's time the Seres were recognised as occupying country at the extreme east of the Asiatic continent. Concerning Chrysc itself Pomponius Mcla, it is probable, entertained no very definite ideas, but his mention of the mythical isle indicates that a new geographical conception had come into being. Henceforth the Ganges was no longer to be regarded as the eastern limit of the habitable world. The map of the earth according to Pomponius Mela, here reproduced from Mr. F. H. Bunbury's admirable History of Ancient Geography, shows the distorted character of his notions concerning the configuration of the seas and continents; but in the insignificant island of Chryse, there seen lying off the promontory of Tamus, we must recognise the earliest attempt ever made by a European to locate the lands of southeastern Asia.

It was about this time, as we learn from the works of Pliny the Elder and from that of the anonymous author of the Periplus of the Erythræan Sea, both of which belong to the latter half of the first century, that a great revolution was worked in Asiatic navigation. Pliny tells