About 800 years after the deluge, the city of Troy was built by the Dardanians; and even before that time, spices, drugs, and many other kinds of merchandize, which were then more abundant than now, were brought from India to Europe, by the Red Sea.  Hence, if credit can be given to these accounts, we may conclude, that the sea of old was much frequented, those of the east bringing their commodities to the haven of Arsinoe in the Arabian Gulf, now called Suez[14], in lat. 30 deg.  N. and at the northern extremity of the Arabian Gulf; from whence the goods were carried by caravans, upon camels, asses, and mules, to Cassou, a city on the coast of the Levant sea, in lat. 32 deg.  N. Allowing seventeen leagues and a half to every degree of latitude, these two cities are said to have been 35 leagues, or 105[15] miles distant from each other.  On account of the heat, these caravans, or great companies of carriers, travelled only in the night, directing themselves by the stars, and by land-marks fixed in the ground for that purpose.  But finding this journey attended with many inconveniencies, the course was twice altered in search of a more commodious route[16].  About nine hundred years after the flood, and previous to the destruction of Troy, Egypt was ruled by a king named Sesostris, who caused a canal to be cut from the Red Sea to that arm of the Nile which flows past the city of Heroum, that ships might pass and repass between India and Europe, to avoid the expence and trouble of carrying merchandize by land across the isthmus of Suez; and Sesostris had large caraks or ships built for this purpose[17].  This enterprize, however, did not completely succeed; for, if it had, Africa would have been converted into an island, as there are even now only twenty leagues or sixty miles of land between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean.

About this time the Grecians gathered a fleet and army, called the Argonautic expedition, under the command of Jason and Alceus[18].  Some say they sailed from Crete, and others from Greece; but they passed through the Propontis and the sleeve of St George into the Euxine, where some of the vessels perished, and Jason returned back to Greece.  Alceus reported that he was driven by a tempest to the Palus Maeotis, where he was deserted by all his company; and those who escaped had to travel by land to the German ocean, where they procured shipping; and sailing past the coasts of Saxony, Friesland, Holland, Flanders, France, Spain, and Italy, returned to the Peloponnesus and Greece, after discovering a great portion of the coast of Europe.