on the dollar, but to inveigle them into your castle and broil
them over a slow fire.

[Sidenote: The outlook of Europe was toward Asia.]

In so far as the attention of people in Europe was called to any
quarter of the globe outside of the seething turbulence in which they
dwelt, it was directed toward Asia. Until after 1492, Europe stood with
her back toward the Atlantic. What there might be out beyond that "Sea
of Darkness" (_Mare Tenebrosum_), as it used commonly to be called, was
a question of little interest and seems to have excited no speculation.
In the view of mediaeval Europe the inhabited world was cut off on the
west by this mysterious ocean, and on the south by the burning sands of
Sahara; but eastward it stretched out no one knew how far, and in that
direction dwelt tribes and nations which Europe, from time immemorial,
had reason to fear. As early as the time of Herodotus, the secular
antagonism between Europe and Asia had become a topic of reflection
among the Greeks, and was wrought with dramatic effect by that great
writer into the structure of his history, culminating in the grand and
stirring scenes of the Persian war. A century and a half later the
conquests of Alexander the Great added a still more impressive climax to
the story. The struggle was afterward long maintained between Roman and
Parthian, but from the fifth century after Christ onward through the
Middle Ages, it seemed as if the Oriental world would never rest until
it had inflicted the extremities of retaliation upon Europe. Whether it
was the heathen of the steppes who were in question, from Attila in the
fifth century to Batu Khan in the thirteenth, or the followers of the
Prophet, who tore away from Christendom the southern shores of the
Mediterranean, and held Spain in their iron grasp, while from age to age
they exhausted their strength in vain against the Eastern Empire, the
threatening danger was always coming with the morning sun; whatever
might be the shock that took the attention of Europe away from herself,
it directed it upon Asia. This is a fact of cardinal importance for us,
inasmuch as it was directly through the interest, more and more
absorbing, which Europe felt in Asia that the discovery of the western
hemisphere was at last effected.

[Sidenote: Routes of trade between Europe and Asia.]

[Sidenote: Claudius Ptolemy.]

[Sidenote: Early mention of China.]

It was not only in war, but in commerce, that the fortun