ABSTRACT
TWENTY-TWO years of the Indian Ocean have made it seem like home to me. For this reason I may be prejudiced against other oceans, but when I consider their histories I feel that ofall the waters ofthe \vorld there is none to compare for rOlnance and glamour with the one by whose shores I have worked. For one thing no other has been so long known to mankind. The first ships that sailed the seas caIne out of the Persian Gulf on to its broad waters. The Sumerians and their successors spread their culture far and wide in the lands surrounding it, and, in the sixth century B.C., the Phrenicialls under the auspices of Pharaoh Nec" Inade the first great voyage of which we know by sailing down the east coast of Africa and circumnavigating the whole continent. The earliest known civilizations are still being uncovered in the lands between the Euphrates and the Nile, and somewhere in this area lay the traditional cradle of our race. It cannot be doubted then, that of all nlankilld, those who live in these regions have the deepest interest for us, and not even yet have we learnt all we should like to know about them.
