In The Reign Of Commodita, Emperor Of Armenia, A Better Course Was
Provided For This Traffic:
The goods being transported by land from the
Caspian, through the country of Hiberia, now Georgia, and thence by the
Phasis into the Euxine, and to the city of Trebisond, they were thence
shipped for the various parts of Europe[42].
It is recorded that
Demetrius Nicanor determined, or actually began, to open a canal of
above 120 miles in length between the Caspian and Euxine, for the greater
convenience of the Indian trade. But he was slain by Ptolemy Ceraunos,
and this famous enterprize fell to nothing[43].
All other ways being lost, by reason of the wars of the Turks, the
spiceries of the Indian Islands, particularly of Java, Sumatra, and the
city of Malacca, were carried up the river Ganges, in Bengal, to the city
of Agra; thence they were carried by land to another city near the Indus,
named Boghar, where they were discharged, because the city of Cabor, or
Laor, the principal city of the Mogores, stands too far within the land.
From thence they were carried to the great city of Samarcand in Bactria,
in which the merchants of India, Persia, and Turkey met together with
their several commodities, as cloth of gold, velvets, camblets, scarlet
and woollen cloths, which were carried to Cathay and the great kingdom of
China; whence they brought back gold, silver, precious stones, pearls,
silk, musk, rhubarb, and many other things of great value.
In after times these merchandizes, drugs, and spiceries, were carried in
ships from India to the Straits of Ormus, and the rivers Euphrates and
Tigris, and were unladen at the city of Basora; from whence they were
carried overland to Aleppo, Damascus, and Barutti; and there the Venetian
galliasses, which transported pilgrims to the Holy Land, came and
received the goods.
In the year 1153, in the time of the emperor Frederick Barbarossa, it is
said there came to the city of Lubeck, in Germany, a canoe like a long
barge, with certain Indians, who were supposed to have come from the
coast of Baccalaos[44], which is in the same latitude with Lubeck. The
Germans greatly wondered to see such a boat and strange people, not
knowing whence they came, nor being able to understand their language,
especially as there was then no knowledge of their country. Although the
boat was small in comparison with the seas it had to cross, it is yet
possible that it might have been conveyed by the winds and waves; for in
our days the _almadias_ of the negroes, which are very small boats,
venture to navigate from Quiloa, Mosambique, and Sofala, around the
Cape of Good Hope, even to the island of St Helena, a very small spot in
the ocean, at a great distance from land.
In the year 1300 after Christ, the great soldan of Cairo restored the
trade of spiceries, drugs, and merchandize from India, by the Red Sea; at
which time they unloaded the goods at the port of Judea[45], and carried
them to Mecca; whence they were distributed by the Mahometan pilgrims[46],
so that each prince endeavoured to increase the honour and profit of
his own country.
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