knowledge obtained by the Vikings did not penetrate to the rest
of Europe; that brought by the Crusades, and their predecessors,
the many pilgrimages to the Holy Land, only restored to Western
Europe the knowledge already stored up in classical antiquity;
but the effect of the extension of the Mongol Empire was of more
wide-reaching importance, and resulted in the addition of knowledge
about Eastern Asia which was not possessed by the Romans, and has
only been surpassed in modern times during the present century.

Towards the beginning of the thirteenth century, Chinchiz Khan,
leader of a small Tatar tribe, conquered most of Central and Eastern
Asia, including China. Under his son, Okkodai, these Mongol Tatars
turned from China to the West, conquered Armenia, and one of the
Mongol generals, named Batu, ravaged South Russia and Poland, and
captured Buda-Pest, 1241. It seemed as if the prophesied end of
the world had come, and the mighty nations Gog and Magog had at
last burst forth to fulfil the prophetic words. But Okkodai died
suddenly, and these armies were recalled. Universal terror seized
Europe, and the Pope, as the head of Christendom, determined to send
ambassadors to the Great Khan, to ascertain his real intentions.
He sent a friar named John of Planocarpini, from Lyons, in 1245,
to the camp of Batu (on the Volga), who passed him on to the court
of the Great Khan at Karakorum, the capital of his empire, of which
only the slightest trace is now left on the left bank of the Orkhon,
some hundred miles south of Lake Baikal.

Here, for the first time, they heard of a kingdom on the east coast
of Asia which was not yet conquered by the Mongols, and which was
known by the name of Cathay. Fuller information was obtained by
another friar, named WILLIAM RUYSBROEK, or Rubruquis, a Fleming,
who also visited Karakorum as an ambassador from St. Louis, and got
back to Europe in 1255, and communicated some of his information to
Roger Bacon. He says: "These Cathayans are little fellows, speaking
much through the nose, and, as is general with all those Eastern
people, their eyes are very narrow.... The common money of Cathay
consists of pieces of cotton paper; about a palm in length and
breadth, upon which certain lines are printed, resembling the seal
of Mangou Khan. They do their writing with a pencil such as painters
paint with, and a single character of theirs comprehends several
letters, so as to form a whole word." He also identifies these
Cathayans with the Seres of the ancients. Ptolemy knew of these as
possessing the land where the silk comes from, but he had also heard
of the Sinae, and failed to identify the two. It has been conjectured
that the name of China came to the West by the sea voyage, and is
a Malay modification, while the names Seres and Cathayans came
overland, and thus caused confusion.

Other Franciscans followed these, and one of them, John of Montecorvino,
settled at Khanbalig (imperial city), or Pekin, as Archbishop (ob.
1358); while Friar Odoric of Pordenone, near Friuli, travelled in
India and China between 1316 and 1330, and brought back an account
of his voyage, filled with most marvellous mendacities, most of
which were taken over bodily into the work attributed to Sir John
Maundeville.

The information brought back by these wandering friars fades, however,
into insignificance before the extensive and accurate knowledge of
almost the whole of Eastern Asia brought back to Europe by Marco
Polo, a Venetian, who spent eighteen years of his life in the East.
His travels form an epoch in the history of geographical discovery
only second to the voyages of Columbus.

In 1260, two of his uncles, named Nicolo and Maffeo Polo, started
from Constaninople on a trading venture to the Crimea, after which
they were led to visit Bokhara, and thence on to the court of the
Great Khan, Kublai, who received them very graciously, and being
impressed with the desirability of introducing Western civilisation
into the new Mongolian empire, he entrusted them with a message to
the Pope, demanding one hundred wise men of the West to teach the
Mongolians the Christian religion and Western arts. The two brothers
returned to their native place, Venice, in 1269, but found no Pope
to comply with the Great Khan's request; for Clement IV. had died
the year before, and his successor had not yet been appointed. They
waited about for a couple of years till Gregory X. was elected, but he
only meagrely responded to the Great Khan's demands, and instructed
two Dominicans to accompany the Polos, who on this occasion took
with them their young nephew Marco, a lad of seventeen. They started
in November 1271, but soon lost the company of the Dominicans,
who lost heart and went back.

They went first to Ormuz, at the mouth of the Persian Gulf, then
struck northward through Khorasan Balkh to the Oxus, and thence
on to the Plateau of Pomir. Thence they passed the Great Desert
of Gobi, and at last reached Kublai in May 1275, at his summer
residence in Kaipingfu. Notwithstanding that they had not carried
out his request, the Khan received them in a friendly manner, and
was especially taken by Marco, whom he took into his own service;
and quite recently a record has been found in the Chinese annals,
stating that in the year 1277 a certain Polo was nominated a
Second-Class Commissioner of the PrivyCouncil. His duty was to
travel on various missions to Eastern Tibet, to Cochin China, and
even to India. The Polos amassed much wealth owing to the Khan's
favour, but found him very unwilling to let them return to Europe.
Marco Polo held several important posts; for three years he was
Governor of the great city of Yanchau, and it seemed likely that
he would die in the service of Kublai Khan.

But, owing to a fortunate chance, they were at last enabled to get
back to Europe. The Khan of Persia desired to marry a princess of
the Great Khan's family, to whom he was related, and as the young
lady upon whom the choice fell could not be expected to undergo
the hardships of the overland journey from China to Persia, it was
decided to send her by sea round the coast of Asia. The Tatars
were riot good navigators, and the Polos at last obtained permission
to escort the young princess on the rather perilous voyage. They
started in 1292, from Zayton, a port in Fokien, and after a voyage
of over two years round the South coast of Asia, successfully carried
the lady to her destined home, though she ultimately had to marry
the son instead of the father, who had died in the interim. They
took leave of her, and travelled through Persia to their own place,
which they reached in 1295. When they arrived at the ancestral
mansion of the Polos, in their coarse dress of Tatar cut, their
relatives for some time refused to believe that they were really
the long-lost merchants. But the Polos invited them to a banquet,
in which they dressed themselves all in their best, and put on new
suits for every course, giving the clothes they had taken off to
the servants. At the conclusion of the banquet they brought forth
the shabby dresses in which they had first arrived, and taking
sharp knives, began to rip up the seams, from which they took vast
quantities of rubies, sapphires, carbuncles, diamonds, and emeralds,
into which form they had converted most of their property. This
exhibition naturally changed the character of the welcome they
received from their relatives, who were then eager to learn how
they had come by such riches.

In describing the wealth of the Great Khan, Marco Polo, who was
the chief spokesman of the party, was obliged to use the numeral
"million" to express the amount of his wealth and the number of
the population over whom he ruled. This was regarded as part of
the usual travellers' tales, and Marco Polo was generally known
by his friends as "Messer Marco Millione."

Such a reception of his stories was no great encouragement to Marco
to tell the tale of his remarkable travels, but in the year of
his arrival at Venice a war broke out between Genoa and the Queen
of the Adriatic, in which Marco Polo was captured and cast into
prison at Genoa. There he found as a fellow-prisoner one Rusticano
of Pisa, a man of some learning and a sort of predecessor of Sir
Thomas Malory, since he had devoted much time to re-writing, in
prose, abstracts of the many romances relating to the Round Table.
These he wrote, not in Italian (which can scarcely be said to have
existed for literary purposes in those days), but in French, the
common language of chivalry throughout Western Europe. While in
prison with Marco Polo, he took down in French the narrative of
the great traveller, and thus preserved it for all time. Marco
Polo was released in 1299, and returned to Venice, where he died
some time after 9th January 1334, the date of his will.

Of the travels thus detailed in Marco Polo's book, and of their
importance and significance in the history of geographical discovery,
it is impossible to give any adequate account in this place. It
will, perhaps, suffice if we give the summary of his claims made
out by Colonel Sir Henry Yule, whose edition of his travels is
one of the great monuments of English learning:--

"He was the first traveller to trace a route across the whole longitude
of Asia, naming and describing kingdom after kingdom which he had seen
with his own eyes: the deserts of Persia, the flowering plateaux and
wild gorges of Badakhshan, the jade-bearing rivers of Khotan, the
Mongolian Steppes, cradle of the power that had so lately threatened
to swallow up Christendom, the new and brilliant court that had been
established by Cambaluc; the first traveller to reveal China in
all its wealth and vastness, its mighty rivers, its huge cities,
its rich manufactures, its swarming population, the inconceivably
vast fleets that quickened its seas and its inland waters; to tell
us of the nations on its borders, with all their eccentricities
of manners and worship; of Tibet, with its sordid devotees; of
Burma, with its golden pagodas and their tinkling crowns; of Laos,
of Siam, of Cochin China, of Japan, the Eastern Thule, with its
rosy pearls and golden-roofed palaces; the first to speak of that
museum of beauty and wonder, still so imperfectly ransacked, the
Indian Archipelago, source of those aromatics then so highly prized,
and whose origin was so dark; of Java, the pearl of islands; of
Sumatra, with its many kings, its strange costly products, and
its cannibal races; of the naked savages of Nicobar and Andaman;
of Ceylon, the island of gems, with its sacred mountain, and its
tomb of Adam; of India the Great, not as a dreamland of Alexandrian
fables, but as a country seen and personally explored, with its
virtuous Brahmans, its obscene ascetics, its diamonds, and the
strange tales of their acquisition, its sea-beds of pearl, and
its powerful sun: the first in mediaeval times to give any distinct
account of the secluded Christian empire of Abyssinia, and the
semi-Christian island of Socotra; to speak, though indeed dimly,
of Zanzibar, with its negroes and its ivory, and of the vast and
distant Madagascar, bordering on the dark ocean of the South, with
its Ruc and other monstrosities, and, in a remotely opposite region,
of Siberia and the Arctic Ocean, of dog-sledges, white bears, and
reindeer-riding Tunguses."

[Illustration: FRA MAURO'S MAP, 1457.]

Marco Polo's is thus one of the greatest names in the history of
geography; it may, indeed, be doubted whether any other traveller
has ever added so extensively to our detailed knowledge of the
earth's surface. Certainly up to the time of Mr. Stanley no man
had on land visited so many places previously unknown to civilised
Europe. But the lands he discovered, though already fully populated,
were soon to fall into disorder, and to be closed to any civilising
influences. Nothing for a long time followed from these discoveries,
and indeed almost up to the present day his accounts were received
with incredulity, and he himself was regarded more as "Marco Millione"
than as Marco Polo.

Extensive as were Marco Polo's travels, they were yet exceeded in
extent, though not in variety, by those of the greatest of Arabian
travellers, Mohammed Ibn Batuta, a native of Tangier, who began his
travels in 1334, as part of the ordinary duty of a good Mohammedan
to visit the holy city of Mecca. While at Alexandria he met a learned
sage named Borhan Eddin, to whom he expressed his desire to travel.
Borhan said to him, "You must then visit my brother Farid Iddin and
my brother Rokn Eddin in Scindia, and my brother Borhan Eddin in
China. When you see them, present my compliments to them." Owing
mainly to the fact that the Tatar princes had adopted Islamism
instead of Christianity, after the failure of Gregory X. to send
Christian teachers to China, Ibn Batuta was ultimately enabled to
greet all three brothers of Borhan Eddin. Indeed, he performed
a more extraordinary exploit, for he was enabled to convey the
greetings of the Sheikh Kawan Eddin, whom he met in China, to a
relative of his residing in the Soudan. During the thirty years
of his travels he visited the Holy Land, Armenia, the Crimea,
Constantinople (which he visited in company with a Greek princess,
who married one of the Tatar Khans), Bokhara, Afghanistan, and
Delhi. Here he found favour with the emperor Mohammed Inghlak,
who appointed him a judge, and sent him on an embassy to China,
at first overland, but, as this was found too dangerous a route,
he went ultimately from Calicut, via Ceylon, the Maldives, and
Sumatra, to Zaitun, then the great port of China. Civil war having
broken out, he returned by the same route to Calicut, but dared
not face the emperor, and went on to Ormuz and Mecca, and returned
to Tangier in 1349. But even then his taste for travel had not been
exhausted. He soon set out for Spain, and worked his way through
Morocco, across the Sahara, to the Soudan. He travelled along the Niger
(which he took for the Nile), and visited Timbuctoo. He ultimately
returned to Fez in 1353, twenty-eight years after he had set out on
his travels. Their chief interest is in showing the wide extent of
Islam in his day, and the facilities which a common creed gave for
extensive travel. But the account of his journeys was written in
Arabic, and had no influence on European knowledge, which, indeed,
had little to learn from him after Marco Polo, except with regard
to the Soudan. With him the history of mediaeval geography may be
fairly said to end, for within eighty years of his death began
the activity of Prince Henry the Navigator, with whom the modern
epoch begins.

Meanwhile India had become somewhat better known, chiefly by the
travels of wandering friars, who visited it mainly for the sake of
the shrine of St. Thomas, who was supposed to have been martyred
in India. Mention should also be made of the early spread of the
Nestorian Church throughout Central Asia. As early as the seventh
century the Syrian Christians who followed the views of Nestorius
began spreading them eastward, founding sees in Persia and Turkestan,
and ultimately spreading as far as Pekin. There was a certain revival
of their missionary activity under the Mongol Khans, but the restricted
nature of the language in which their reports were written prevented
them from having any effect upon geographical knowledge, except in
one particular, which is of some interest. The fate of the Lost
Ten Tribes of Israel has always excited interest, and a legend arose
that they had been converted to Christianity, and existed somewhere
in the East under a king who was also a priest, and known as Prester
John. Now, in the reports brought by some of the Nestorian priests
westward, it was stated that one of the Mongol princes named Ung Khan
had adopted Christianity, and as this in Syriac sounded something
like "John the Cohen," or "Priest," he was identified with the Prester
John of legend, and for a long time one of the objects of travel in
the East was to discover this Christian kingdom. It was, however,
later ascertained that there did exist such a Christian kingdom in
Abyssinia, and as owing to the erroneous views of Ptolemy, followed
by the Arabs, Abyssinia was considered to spread towards Farther
India, the land of Prester John was identified in Abyssinia. We
shall see later on how this error helped the progress of geographical
discovery.

The total addition of these mediaeval travels to geographical knowledge
consisted mainly in the addition of a wider extent of land in China,
and the archipelago of Japan, or Cipangu, to the map of the world.
The accompanying map displays the various travels and voyages of
importance, and will enable the reader to understand how students
of geography, who added on to Ptolemy's estimate of the extent of
the world east and west the new knowledge acquired by Marco Polo,
would still further decrease the distance westward between Europe
and Cipangu, and thus prepare men for the voyage of Columbus.

[_Authorities:_ Sir Henry Yule, _Cathay and the Way Thither_, 1865;
_The Book of Ser Marco Polo_, 1875.]




CHAPTER V

ROADS AND COMMERCE

We have now conducted the course of our inquiries through ancient
times and the Middle Ages up to the very eve of the great discoveries
of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and we have roughly indicated
what men had learned about the earth during that long period, and,
how they learned it. But it still remains to consider by what means
they arrived at their knowledge, and why they sought for it. To some
extent we may have answered the latter question when dealing with
the progress of conquest, but men did not conquer merely for the
sake of conquest. We have still to consider the material advantages
attaching to warfare. Again when men go on their wars of discovery,
they have to progress, for the most part, along paths already beaten
for them by the natives of the country they intend to conquer; and
often when they have succeeded in warfare, they have to consolidate
their rule by creating new and more appropriate means of communication.
To put it shortly, we have still to discuss the roads of the ancient
and mediaeval worlds, and the commerce for which those roads were
mainly used.

A road may be, for our purposes, most readily defined as the most
convenient means of communication between two towns; and this logically
implies that the towns existed before the roads were made; and in a
fuller investigation of any particular roads, it will be necessary
to start by investigating why men collect their dwellings at certain
definite spots. In the beginning, assemblies of men were made chiefly
or altogether for defensive purposes, and the earliest towns were
those which, from their natural position, like Athens or Jerusalem,
could be most easily defended. Then, again, religious motives often
had their influence in early times, and towns would grow round temples
or cloisters. But soon considerations of easy accessibility rule in
the choice of settlements, and for that purpose towns on rivers,
especially at fords of rivers, as Westminster, or in well-protected
harbours like Naples, or in the centre of a district, as Nuremberg
or Vienna, would form the most convenient places of meeting for
exchange of goods. Both on a river, or on the sea-shore, the best
means of communication would be by ships or boats; but once such
towns had been established, it would be necessary to connect them
with one another by land routes, and these would be determined
chiefly by the lie of the land. Where mountains interfered, a large
detour would have to be made--as, for example, round the Pyrenees;
if rivers intervened, fords would have to be sought for, and a new
town probably built at the most convenient place of passage. When
once a recognised way had been found between any two places, the
conservative instincts of man would keep it in existence, even
though a better route were afterwards found.

The influence of water communication is of paramount importance
in determining the situation of towns in early times. Towns in
the corners of bays, like Archangel, Riga, Venice, Genoa, Naples,
Tunis, Bassorah, Calcutta, would naturally be the centre-points
of the trade of the bay. On rivers a suitable spot would be where
the tides ended, like London, or at conspicuous bends of a stream,
or at junctures with affluents, as Coblentz or Khartoum. One nearly
always finds important towns at the two ends of a peninsula, like
Hamburg and Lubeck, Venice and Genoa; though for naval purposes
it is desirable to have a station at the head of the peninsula,
to command both arms of the sea, as at Cherbourg, Sevastopol, or
Gibraltar. Roads would then easily be formed across the base of
the peninsula, and to its extreme point.

At first the inhabitants of any single town would regard those
of all others as their enemies, but after a time they would find
it convenient to exchange some of their superfluities for those
of their neighbours, and in this way trade would begin. Markets
would become neutral ground, in which mutual animosities would
be, for a time, laid aside for the common advantage; and it would
often happen that localities on the border line of two states would
be chosen as places for the exchange of goods, ultimately giving
rise to the existence of a fresh town. As commercial intercourse
increased, the very inaccessibility of fortress towns on the heights
would cause them to be neglected for settlements in the valleys or
by the river sides, and, as a rule, roads pick out valleys or level
ground for their natural course. For military purposes, however, it
would sometimes be necessary to depart from the valley routes,
and, as we shall see, the Roman roads paid no regard to these
requirements.

The earliest communication between nations, as we have seen, was
that of the Phoenicians by sea. They founded factories, or neutral
grounds for trade, at appropriate spots all along the Mediterranean
coasts, and the Greeks soon followed their example in the AEgean
and Black Seas. But at an early date, as we know from the Bible,
caravan routes were established between Egypt, Syria, and Mesopotamia,
and later on these were extended into Farther Asia. But in Europe
the great road-builders were the Romans. Rome owed its importance
in the ancient world to its central position, at first in Italy,
and then in the whole of the Mediterranean. It combined almost
all the advantages necessary for a town: it was in the bend of
a river, yet accessible from the sea; its natural hills made it
easily defensible, as Hannibal found to his cost; while its central
position in the Latian Plain made it the natural resort of all
the Latin traders. The Romans soon found it necessary to utilise
their central position by rendering themselves accessible to the
rest of Italy, and they commenced building those marvellous roads,
which in most cases have remained, owing to their solid construction.
"Building" is the proper word to use, for a Roman road is really a
broad wall built in a deep ditch so as to come up above the level
of the surface. Scarcely any amount of traffic could wear this
solid substructure away, and to this day throughout Europe traces
can be found of the Roman roads built nearly two thousand years
ago. As the Roman Empire extended, these roads formed one of the
chief means by which the lords of the world were enabled to preserve
their conquests. By placing a legion in a central spot, where many
of these roads converged, they were enabled to strike quickly in
any direction and overawe the country. Stations were naturally
built along these roads, and to the present day many of the chief
highways of Europe follow the course of the old Roman roads. Our
modern civilisation is in a large measure the outcome of this network
of roads, and we can distinctly trace a difference in the culture of
a nation where such roads never existed--as in Russia and Hungary,
as contrasted with the west of Europe, where they formed the best
means of communication. It was only in the neighbourhood of these
highways that the fullest information was obtained of the position
of towns, and the divisions of peoples; and a sketch map like the
one already given, of the chief Roman roads of antiquity, gives
also, as it were, a skeleton of the geographical knowledge summed
up in the great work of Ptolemy.

But of more importance for the future development of geographical
knowledge were the great caravan routes of Asia, to which we must
now turn our attention. Asia is the continent of plateaux which
culminate in the Steppes of the Pamirs, appropriately called by
their inhabitants "the Roof of the World." To the east of these,
four great mountain ranges run, roughly, along the parallels of
latitude--the Himalayas to the south, the Kuen-Iun, Thian Shan,
and Altai to the north. Between the Himalayas and the Kuen-lun is
the great Plateau of Tibet, which runs into a sort of cul-de-sac
at its western end in Kashmir. Between the Kuen-lun and the Thian
Shan we have the Gobi Steppe of Mongolia, running west of Kashgar
and Yarkand; while between the Thian Shan and the Altai we have
the great Kirghiz Steppe. It is clear that only two routes are
possible between Eastern and Western Asia: that between the Kuen-lun
and the Thian Shan via Kashgar and Bokhara, and that south of the
Altai, skirting the north of the great lakes Balkash, Aral, and
Caspian, to the south of Russia. The former would lead to Bassorah
or Ormuz, and thence by sea, or overland, round Arabia to Alexandria;
the latter and longer route would reach Europe via Constantinople.
Communication between Southern Asia and Europe would mainly be
by sea, along the coast of the Indies, taking advantage of the
monsoons from Ceylon to Aden, and then by the Red Sea. Alexandria,
Bassorah, and Ormuz would thus naturally be the chief centres of
Eastern trade, while communication with the Mongols or with China
would go along the two routes above mentioned, which appear to have
existed during all historic time. It was by these latter routes
that the Polos and the other mediaeval travellers to Cathay reached
that far-distant country. But, as we know from Marco Polo's travels,
China could also be reached by the sea voyage; and for all practical
purposes, in the late Middle Ages, when the Mongol empire broke
up, and traffic through mid Asia was not secure, communication
with the East was via Alexandria.

Now it is important for our present inquiry to realise how largely
Europe after the Crusades was dependent on the East for most of the
luxuries of life. Nothing produced by the looms of Europe could
equal the silk of China, the calico of India, the muslin of Mussul.
The chief gems which decorated the crowns of kings and nobles,
the emerald, the topaz, the ruby, the diamond, all came from the
East--mainly from India. The whole of mediaeval medical science was
derived from the Arabs, who sought most of their drugs from Arabia
or India. Even for the incense which burned upon the innumerable
altars of Roman Catholic Europe, merchants had to seek the materials
in the Levant. For many of the more refined handicrafts, artists had
to seek their best material from Eastern traders: such as shellac
for varnish, or mastic for artists' colours (gamboge from Cambodia,
ultramarine from lapis lazuli); while it was often necessary, under
mediaeval circumstances, to have resort to the musk or opopanax of
the East to counteract the odours resulting from the bad sanitary
habits of the West. But above all, for the condiments which were
almost necessary for health, and certainly desirable for seasoning
the salted food of winter and the salted fish of Lent. Europeans
were dependent upon the spices of the Asiatic islands. In Hakluyt's
great work on "English Voyages and Navigations," he gives in his
second volume a list, written out by an Aleppo merchant, William
Barrett, in 1584, of the places whence the chief staples of the
Eastern trade came, and it will be interesting to give a selection
from his long account.

Cloves from Maluco, Tarenate, Amboyna, by way of Java.
Nutmegs from Banda.
Maces from Banda, Java, and Malacca.
Pepper Common from Malabar.
Sinnamon from Seilan (Ceylon).
Spicknard from Zindi (Scinde) and Lahor.
Ginger Sorattin from Sorat (Surat) within Cambaia (Bay of Bengal).
Corall of Levant from Malabar.
Sal Ammoniacke from Zindi and Cambaia.
Camphora from Brimeo (Borneo) near to China.
Myrrha from Arabia Felix.
Borazo (Borax) from Cambaia and Lahor.
Ruvia to die withall, from Chalangi.
Allumme di Rocca (Rock Alum) from China and Constantinople.
Oppopanax from Persia.
Lignum Aloes from Cochin, China, and Malacca.
Laccha (Shell-lac) from Pegu and Balaguate.
Agaricum from Alemannia.
Bdellium from Arabia Felix.
Tamarinda from Balsara (Bassorah).
Safran (Saffron) from Balsara and Persia.
Thus from Secutra (Socotra).
Nux Vomica from Malabar.
Sanguis Draconis (Dragon's Blood) from Secutra.
Musk from Tartarie by way of China.
Indico (Indigo) from Zindi and Cambaia.
Silkes Fine from China.
Castorium (Castor Oil) from Almania.
Masticke from Sio.
Oppium from Pugia (Pegu) and Cambaia.
Dates from Arabia Felix and Alexandria.
Sena from Mecca.
Gumme Arabicke from Zaffo (Jaffa).
Ladanum (Laudanum) from Cyprus and Candia.
Lapis Lazzudis from Persia.
Auripigmentum (Gold Paint) from many places of Turkey.
Rubarbe from Persia and China.

These are only a few selections from Barrett's list, but will
sufficiently indicate what a large number of household luxuries,
and even necessities, were derived from Asia in the Middle Ages.
The Arabs had practically the monopoly of this trade, and as Europe
had scarcely anything to offer in exchange except its gold and
silver coins, there was a continuous drain of the precious metals
from West to East, rendering the Sultans and Caliphs continuously
richer, and culminating in the splendours of Solomon the Magnificent.
Alexandria was practically the centre of all this trade, and most
of the nations of Europe found it necessary to establish factories
in that city, to safeguard the interests of their merchants, who
all sought for Eastern luxuries in its port Benjamin of Tudela,
a Jew, who visited it about 1172, gives the following description
of it:--

"The city is very mercantile, and affords an excellent market to
all nations. People from all Christian kingdoms resort to Alexandria,
from Valencia, Tuscany, Lombardy, Apulia, Amalfi, Sicilia, Raguvia,
Catalonia, Spain, Roussillon, Germany, Saxony, Denmark, England,
Flandres, Hainault, Normandy, France, Poitou, Anjou, Burgundy,
Mediana, Provence, Genoa, Pisa, Gascony, Arragon, and Navarre.
From the West you meet Mohammedans from Andalusia, Algarve, Africa,
and Arabia, as well as from the countries towards India, Savila,
Abyssinia, Nubia, Yemen, Mesopotamia, and Syria, besides Greeks
and Turks. From India they import all sorts of spices, which are
bought by Christian merchants. The city is full of bustle, and
every nation has its own fonteccho (or hostelry) there."

Of all these nations, the Italians had the shortest voyage to make
before reaching Alexandria, and the Eastern trade practically fell
into their hands before the end of the thirteenth century. At first
Amalfi and Pisa were the chief ports, and, as we have seen, it
was at Amalfi that the mariner's compass was perfected; but soon
the two maritime towns at the heads of the two seas surrounding
Italy came to the front, owing to the advantages of their natural
position. Genoa and Venice for a long time competed with one another
for the monopoly of this trade, but the voyage from Venice was
more direct, and after a time Genoa had to content itself with
the trade with Constantinople and the northern overland route from
China. From Venice the spices, the jewels, the perfumes, and stuffs
of the East were transmitted north through Augsburg and Nuernberg
to Antwerp and Bruges and the Hanse Towns, receiving from them
the gold they had gained by their fisheries and textile goods.
England sent her wool to Italy, in order to tickle her palate and
her nose with the condiments and perfumes of the East.

The wealth and importance of Venice were due almost entirely to
this monopoly of the lucrative Eastern trade. By the fifteenth
century she had extended her dominions all along the lower valley
of the Po, into Dalmatia, parts of the Morea, and in Crete, till
at last, in 1489, she obtained possession of Cyprus, and thus had
stations all the way from Aleppo or Alexandria to the north of the
Adriatic. But just as she seemed to have reached the height of her
prosperity--when the Aldi were the chief printers in Europe, and
the Bellini were starting the great Venetian school of painting--a
formidable rival came to the front, who had been slowly preparing
a novel method of competition in the Eastern trade for nearly the
whole of the fifteenth century. With that method begins the great
epoch of modern geographical discovery.

[_Authorities:_ Heyd, _Commerce du Levant_, 2 vols., 1878.]




CHAPTER VI

TO THE INDIES EASTWARD--PRINCE HENRY AND VASCO DA GAMA

Up to the fifteenth century the inhabitants of the Iberian Peninsula
were chiefly occupied in slowly moving back the tide of Mohammedan
conquest, which had spread nearly throughout the country from 711
onwards. The last sigh of the Moor in Spain was to be uttered in
1492--an epoch-making year, both in history and in geography. But
Portugal, the western side of the peninsula, had got rid of her
Moors at a much earlier date--more that 200 years before--though
she found it difficult to preserve her independence from the
neighbouring kingdom of Castile. The attempt of King Juan of Castile
to conquer the country was repelled by Joao, a natural son of the
preceding king of Portugal, and in 1385 he became king, and freed
Portugal from any danger on the side of Castile by his victory
at Aljubarrota. He married Philippa, daughter of John of Gaunt;
and his third son, Henry, was destined to be the means of
revolutionising men's views of the inhabited globe. He first showed
his mettle in the capture of Ceuta, opposite Gibraltar, at the
time of the battle of Agincourt, 1415, and by this means he first
planted the Portuguese banner on the Moorish coast. This contact
with the Moors may possibly have first suggested to Prince Henry
the idea of planting similar factory-fortresses among the Mussulmans
of India; but, whatever the cause, he began, from about the year
1418, to devote all his thoughts and attention to the possibility
of reaching India otherwise than through the known routes, and
for that purpose established himself on the rocky promontory of
Sagres, almost the most western spot on the continent of Europe.

Here he established an observatory, and a seminary for the training of
theoretical and practical navigators. He summoned thither astronomers
and cartographers and skilled seamen, while he caused stouter and
larger vessels to be built for the express purpose of exploration.
He perfected the astrolabe (the clumsy predecessor of the modern
sextant) by which the latitude could be with some accuracy determined;
and he equipped all his ships with the compass, by which their
steering was entirely determined. He brought from Majorca (which,
as we have seen, was the centre of practical map-making in the
fourteenth century) one Mestre Jacme, "a man very skilful in the
art of navigation, and in the making of maps and instruments."
With his aid, and doubtless that of others, he set himself to study
the problem of the possibility of a sea voyage to India round the
coast of Africa.

[Illustration: PROGRESS OF PORTUGUESE DISCOVERY]

We have seen that Ptolemy, with true scientific caution, had left
undefined the extent of Africa to the south; but Eratosthenes and
many of the Roman geographers, even after Ptolemy, were not content
with this agnosticism, but boldly assumed that the coast of Africa
made a semicircular sweep from the right horn of Africa, just south
of the Red Sea, with which they were acquainted, round to the
north-western shore, near what we now term Morocco. If this were
the fact, the voyage by the ocean along this sweep of shore would
be even shorter than the voyage through the Mediterranean and Red
Seas, while of course there would be no need for disembarking at
the Isthmus of Suez. The writers who thus curtailed Africa of its
true proportions assumed another continent south of it, which,
however, was in the torrid zone, and completely uninhabitable.

Now the north-west coast of Africa was known in Prince Henry's
days as far as Cape Bojador. It would appear that Norman sailors
had already advanced beyond Cape Non, or Nun, which was so called
because it was supposed that nothing existed beyond it. Consequently
the problems that Prince Henry had to solve were whether the coast of
Africa trended sharply to the east after Cape Bojador, and whether
the ideas of the ancients about the uninhabitability of the torrid
zone were justified by fact. He attempted to solve these problems by
sending out, year after year, expeditions down the north-west coast
of Africa, each of which penetrated farther than its predecessor.
Almost at the beginning he was rewarded by the discovery, or
re-discovery, of Madeira in 1420, by Joao Gonsalvez Zarco, one of
the squires of his household. For some time he was content with
occupying this and the neighbouring island of Porto Santo, which,
however, was ruined by the rabbits let loose upon it. On Madeira
vines from Burgundy were planted, and to this day form the chief
industry of the island. In 1435 Cape Bojador was passed, and in
1441 Cape Branco discovered. Two years later Cape Verde was reached
and passed by Nuno Tristao, and for the first time there were signs
that the African coast trended eastward. By this time Prince Henry's
men had become familiar with the natives along the shore and no less
than one thousand of them had been brought back and distributed
among the Portuguese nobles as pages and attendants. In 1455 a
Venetian, named Alvez Cadamosto, undertook a voyage still farther
south for purposes of trade, the Prince supplying the capital, and
covenanting for half profits on results. They reached the mouth
of the Gambia, but found the natives hostile. Here for the first
time European navigators lost sight of the pole-star and saw the
brilliant constellation of the Southern Cross. The last discovery
made during Prince Henry's life was that of the Cape Verde Islands,
by one of his captains, Diogo Gomez, in 1460--the very year of his
death. As the successive discoveries were made, they were jotted
down by the Prince's cartographers on portulanos, and just before
his death the King of Portugal sent to a Venetian monk, Fra Mauro,
details of all discoveries up to that time, to be recorded on a
_mappa mundi_, a copy of which still exists (p. 77).

The impulse thus given by Prince Henry's patient investigation of
the African coast continued long after his death. In 1471 Fernando
de Poo discovered the island which now bears his name, while in
the same year Pedro d'Escobar crossed the equator. Wherever the
Portuguese investigators landed they left marks of their presence,
at first by erecting crosses, then by carving on trees Prince Henry's
motto, "Talent de bien faire," and finally they adopted the method
of erecting stone pillars, surmounted by a cross, and inscribed
with the king's arms and name. These pillars were called _padraos_.
In 1484, Diego Cam, a knight of the king's household, set up one
of these pillars at the mouth of a large river, which he therefore
called the Rio do Padrao; it was called by the natives the Zaire, and
is now known as the River Congo. Diego Cam was, on this expedition,
accompanied by Martin Behaim of Nuernberg, whose globe is celebrated
in geographical history as the last record of the older views (p.
115).

Meanwhile, from one of the envoys of the native kings who visited
the Portuguese Court, information was received that far to the east
of the countries hitherto discovered there was a great Christian
king. This brought to mind the mediaeval tradition of Prester John,
and accordingly the Portuguese determined to make a double attempt,
both by sea and by land, to reach this monarch. By sea the king
sent two vessels under the command of Bartholomew Diaz, while by
land he despatched, in the following year, two men acquainted with
Arabic, Pedro di Covilham and Affonso de Payba. Covilham reached
Aden, and there took ship for Calicut, being the first Portuguese
to sail the Indian Ocean. He then returned to Sofala, and obtained
news of the Island of the Moon, now known as Madagascar. With this
information he returned to Cairo, where he found ambassadors from
Joao, two Jews, Abraham of Beja and Joseph of Lamejo. These he
sent back with the information that ships that sailed down the
coast of Guinea would surely reach the end of Africa, and when
they arrived in the Eastern Ocean they should ask for Sofala and
the Island of the Moon. Meanwhile Covilham returned to the Red
Sea, and made his way into Abyssinia, where he married and settled
down, transmitting from time to time information to Portugal which
gave Europeans their first notions of Abyssinia.

The voyage by land in search of Prester John had thus been completely
successful, while, at the same time, information had been obtained
giving certain hopes of the voyage by sea. This had, in its way,
been almost as successful, for Diaz had rounded the cape now known
as the Cape of Good Hope, but to which he proposed giving the title
of Cabo Tormentoso, or "Stormy Cape." King Joao, however, recognising
that Diaz's voyage had put the seal upon the expectations with
which Prince Henry had, seventy years before, started his series
of explorations, gave it the more auspicious name by which it is
now known.

For some reason which has not been adequately explained, no further
attempt was made for nearly ten years to carry out the final
consummation of Prince Henry's plan by sending out another expedition.
In the meantime, as we shall see, Columbus had left Portugal, after
a mean attempt had been made by the king to carry out his novel
plan of reaching India without his aid; and, as a just result,
the discovery of a western voyage to the Indies (as it was then
thought) had been successfully accomplished by Columbus, in the
service of the Catholic monarchs of Spain, in 1492. This would
naturally give pause to any attempt at reaching India by the more
cumbersome route of coasting along Africa, which had turned out
to be a longer process than Prince Henry had thought. Three years
after Columbus's discovery King Joao died, and his son and successor
Emmanuel did not take up the traditional Portuguese method of reaching
India till the third year of his reign.

By this time it had become clear, from Columbus's second voyage,
that there were more difficulties in the way of reaching the Indies
by his method than had been thought; and the year after his return
from his second voyage in 1496, King Emmanuel determined on once
more taking up the older method. He commissioned Vasco da Gama,
a gentleman of his court, to attempt the eastward route to India
with three vessels, carrying in all about sixty men. Already by this
time Columbus's bold venture into the unknown seas had encouraged
similar boldness in others, and instead of coasting down the whole
extent of the western coast of Africa, Da Gama steered direct for
Cape Verde Islands, and thence out into the ocean, till he reached
the Bay of St. Helena, a little to the north of the Cape of Good
Hope.

For a time he was baffled in his attempt to round the Cape by the