The Houghton East Indiaman made the same run in thirteen days; and, on her
return, was only five days from Gomeroon to Scindy Bay.
The manners of the wretched inhabitants have occasionally been already
noticed; but Nearchus dwells upon some further particulars, which, from
their conformity with modern information, are worthy of remark. Their
ordinary support is fish, as the name of Icthyophagi, or fish-eaters,
implies; but why they are for this reason specified as a separate tribe
from the Gadrosians, who live inland, does not appear. Ptolomy considers
all this coast as Karmania, quite to Mosarna; and whether Gadrosia is a
part of that province, or a province itself, is a matter of no importance;
but the coast must have received the name Nearchus gives it from Nearchus
himself; for it is Greek, and he is the first Greek who explored it. It
may, perhaps, be a translation of a native name, and such translations the
Greeks indulged in sometimes to the prejudice of geography. "But these
people, though they live on fish, are few of them fishermen, for their
barks are few, and those few very mean and unfit for the service. The fish
they obtain they owe to the flux and reflux of the tide, for they extend a
net upon the shore, supported by stakes of more than 200 yards in length,
within which, at the tide of ebb, the fish are confined, and settle in the
pits or in equalities of the sand, either made for this purpose or
accidental.
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