favour of Montpellier.

[Illustration: Fig. 189.--View of Alexandria in Egypt, in the Sixteenth
Century.--Fac-simile of a Woodcut in the Travels of P. Belon,
"Observations de Plusieurs Singularitez," &c.: 4to (Paris, 1588).]

Commerce maintained frequent communications with the East; it sought its
supplies on the coast of Syria, and especially at Alexandria, in Egypt,
which was a kind of depot for goods obtained from the rich countries lying
beyond the Red Sea (Figs. 189 and 190). The Frank navigators imported from
these countries, groceries, linen, Egyptian paper, pearls, perfumes, and a
thousand other rare and choice articles. In exchange they offered chiefly
the precious metals in bars rather than coined, and it is probable that at
this period they also exported iron, wines, oil, and wax. The agricultural
produce and manufactures of Gaul had not sufficiently developed to
provide anything more than what was required for the producers themselves.
Industry was as yet, if not purely domestic, confined to monasteries and
to the houses of the nobility; and even the kings employed women or serf
workmen to manufacture the coarse stuffs with which they clothed
themselves and their households. We may add, that the bad state of the
roads, the little security they offered to travellers, the extortions of
all kinds to which foreign merchants were subjected, and above all the
iniquitous System of fines and tolls which each landowner thought right to
exact, before letting merchandise pass through his domains, all created
insuperable obstacles to the development of commerce.

[Illustration: Fig. 190.--Transport of Merchandise on the Backs of
Camels.--Fac-simile of a Woodcut in the "Cosmographie Universelle," of
Thevet: folio, 1575.]

The Frank kings on several occasions evinced a desire that communications
favourable to trade should be re-established in their dominions. We find,
for instance, Chilperic making treaties with Eastern emperors in favour
of the merchants of Agde and Marseilles, Queen Brunehaut making viaducts
worthy of the Romans, and which still bear her name, and Dagobert opening
at St. Denis free fairs--that is to say, free, or nearly so, from all
tolls and taxes--to which goods, both agricultural and manufactured, were
sent from every corner of Europe and the known world, to be afterwards
distributed through the towns and provinces by the enterprise of internal
commerce.

After the reign of Dagobert, commerce aga