THOMAS BOWREY AND JOHN FRYER. 153.
Taurus for the mountains north. The great rivers are only mentioned in his letters: 'The Rivers are innumerable; but those of greatest fame are Indus and Ganges, the latter not only for its many Navigable Streams ..., but for its Purity in the esteem of the most Religious ... ->
In the previous pages I have only picked out a few amongst the numerous East Indian travellers, and my object has only been to show how very little they really knew of a region, which even in our own days makes such a desperate resistance against European exploration. The Indus, the Satlej, and the Ganges were even better known by Greek and Roman antiquity, and even by the travellers of the I 6th and 1 7th centuries Ptolemy was regarded as the greatest authority on these matters. The Arab geographers at least knew of the existence of a country called Tibet, while many of the Europeans hardly mention its name. Only the musk appears as a connecting link between Arabs and Europeans. Some travellers, however, knew that Tibet was the southern part of Great Tartaria. But as a whole, the mysterious country remained hidden under impenetrable clouds even after the journeys of Andrade and Grueber.
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