APPENDIX. xxxvn conclude, that vessels of a construction and size best adapted to the service of discovery and long voyages were chosen on occasions like the present.”

In addition to the instances selected by Major Rennell, as proofs of the slow rate of sailing of the yessels of the ancients, we here submit a few examples of a contrary tendency ; and from these it will appear (if the numbers of Pliny may be relied upon), that navigation under the Romans had made rapid strides, and that voyages undertaken by the vessels of the empire must have been performed under other disadvantages than those resulting from a slow rate of sailing, when they are found to be so bad as those which we have instanced above.

The Preefect Galerius is stated by Pliny (lib. xix, Proemium) to have employed no more than seven days in the voyage from Sicily to Alexandria ; and Rabilius is said, immediately afterwards, to have made the same voyage in six.

We cannot reckon less than one thousand Roman miles for the distance between the Faro of Messina and Alexandria ; which performed in the space of seven days (as first mentioned), would give a rate of one hundred and forty-three M.P. per day ; and being reckoned at six (as in the latter instance), a rate of one hundred and fifty such miles.

In the same place we find that Valerius Marianus accomplished the voyage from Puteoli to Alexandria in the space of nine days (lenissimo flatu), under the disadvantage of extremely light winds. This may be reckoned at two hundred and fifty M.P. more than the voyage above stated, or one thousand two hundred and fifty Roman miles ; and from it will be found to result a distance of nearly one hundred and forty M.P. per day— differing very little from the instance first mentioned, and much less from the latter than might reasonably be expected, from the circumstances under which it was performed.

We also find, from what follows, in the passage alluded to, that the voyage from the Straits of Gibraltar to Ostia was accomplished