,
topaz, sapphires, and pearls. From India, the direct southern route lay
across the Indian Ocean to Aden and up the Red Sea to Cairo or
Alexandria. The middle route followed the Persian Gulf and the Tigris
River to Bagdad, and thence to the coast cities of Damascus, Jaffa,
Laodicea, and Antioch. And by the overland northern route from Peking,
by painful and dangerous stages through Turkestan to Yarkand, Bokhara,
and Tabriz came the products of China and Persia,--silks and fabrics,
rich tapestries and priceless rugs.

From the twelfth century Italian cities grew rich and powerful on the
carrying trade between western Europe and the Levant. Venice and Genoa,
Marseilles and Barcelona, whose merchants had permanent quarters in
Eastern cities, became the distributing centers for western Europe. Each
year until 1560, a Venetian trading fleet, passing through the Straits
of Gibraltar, touching at Spanish and Portuguese ports, at Southampton
or London, finally reached the Netherlands at Bruges. But the main lines
to the north were the river highways: from Marseilles up the Rhone to
Lyons and down the Seine to Paris and Rouen; from Venice through the
passes of the Alps to the great southern German cities of Augsburg and
Nuremburg, and thence northward along the Elbe to the Hanse towns of
Hamburg or Lubec; or from Milan across the St. Gothard to Basle and
westward into France at Chalons. The main carriers from the North of the
Alps were the merchants of South Germany; while the Hanse merchants,
buying in southern Germany, or in the Netherlands at Bruges and Antwerp,
sold in England and France, in the Baltic cities, and as far east as
Poland and Russia.

II

Before the middle of the thirteenth century no Italian merchant could
have told you anything of the "isles where the spices grow," or of the
countries which produced the rich fabrics in which he trafficked: he
knew only that they came to Alexandria or Damascus from Far Eastern
lands. For from time immemorial the Orient had been the enemy's country,
little known beyond the bounds of Syria, a half-mythical land of alien
races, of curious customs and infidel faiths, a land of interminable
distances, rich and populous, doubtless, certainly dangerous and
inaccessible. But in the thirteenth century the veil which had long
shrouded Asia in mystery was lifted, discovering to European eyes
countries so rich in hoarded treasure and the products of industry that
the gems and spice