There was a day when trade was a thing of here-and-there; a thing of
sailing ships and caravans, of merchants of Bagdad, Cairo, Venice,
Alexandria, Jerusalem, Tyre, and Damascus. Ivory, gold, gems, precious
stuffs, teak and cedar wood, Lebanon pine, apes, peacocks, sandal-wood,
camel's hair, goat's hair, frankincense, pearl, dyes, myrrh, cassia,
cinnamon, Balm of Gilead, calamus, spikenard, corn, ebony, figs, fir,
olives, olive-wood, wheat, amber, copper, lead, tin, and precious stones
were the chief articles of exchange. A very little sufficed the poor;
the rich were housed in palaces and panoplied in gems.
As time went on, the processional of traders became a processional led
out, in turn, by the merchants of one city after another. It is a
picturesque study, that of the trade-routes of the Middle Ages! There
was the Mediterranean seaboard, and there were the Baltic towns and the
Hanse towns; the Portuguese mariners and traders; the Venetian merchant
princes. There was the Spanish colonial trade; the Dutch trade of the
East Indies; the trade of Amsterdam and London. There were the
Elizabethan sea-rovers.
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