HISTORY. 29 
The precious goods from India were obliged, as a rule, to take 
their way through the Red Sea and through the domain of the 
Egyptian sultans, for which reason the Italian merchants of 
the middle ages were compelled to bestow the greatest attention 
upon their relations to those rulers. The ambassadors of the 
latter to the doges of Venice, toa Venetian queen of Cyprus, and 
to Lorenzo de’ Medici in Florence, brought rare drugs of the 
Orient to Europe, as, for instance., aloes-wood,' civet, Mecca bal- 
sam,’ myrobalans,* opium, and sugar, the latter of which was at 
that time, or in the second half of the fifteenth century, still a 
rare article. Thus in the year 1461 denzoin was brought for the 
first time to Venice.* 
It was only in case of necessity that the Italians permitted 
their goods from the Orient to take the much longer route 
through the Persian Gulf, or even through Central Asia to the 
Black Sea, instead of through Egypt. 
The intercourse with the Levant consisted quite especially in 
the importation of numerous Asiatic products; there were but 
few articies which the Italians, inhabitants of Southern France, 
and Catalonians, for example, had to ship to Alexandria. The 
Venetian statesman, Marino Sanudo,’ in the year 1307, mentioned 
as such articles almonds, honey, hazelnuts, mastic, and saffron. 
The most’ prominent Florentine houses also conducted the 
Levant trade with consummate mastery. Thus, for example, 
in the first half of the fourteenth century, the large trade asso- 
ciation which bore the name of the leading house, Bardi in 
Florence. It was in their service that Pegolotti, about the year 
1340, wrote that very remarkable trade-book, ‘‘ Pratica della 
mercatura,”*® which gives the most instructive informatio nre- 
garding the commercial relations, coins, weights, measures, and . 
1 Flickiger, ‘‘ Pharmakognosie,” p. 195, and this work, p. 19. 
* Tbid., p. 180. 
8 Thid., p. 244. 
“Tbid., p. 118. . 
5 Fliickiger, ‘‘ Pharmakognosie,” p. 1,018. 
* Compare further Heyd, loc. cit., i., p. xiii, 
