CHAPTER V 



PEPPER AND GOLD 



WHAT were the first great inducements of gain which 

 led to West African maritime discovery on the part 

 of these Normans, Catalans, Genoese, Portuguese, 

 and, as will be shown later, English, Dutch, French, Swedes, 

 Danes, Germans, Flemings, and Spaniards ? Firstly, the search 

 was for gold, then for pepper, and finally for slaves. To the 

 gold quest they were spurred by the discoveries of the 

 Arabs in the centuries that followed the outbreak of Islam. 

 The ancient, like the modern, Semites seem to have had a 

 kind of sixth sense, a "nose," a flair for gold. It was probably 

 amongst the Semiticised Hamites of Lower Egypt and the 

 pure Semites of Arabia, Syria, and Mesopotamia (in the Old 

 World) that the admiration for and use of gold as a precious 

 metal first arose ; though it may also have become a precious 

 metal in the eyes of man in Eastern or Central Asia. At any 

 rate, from the rising civilisations of Asia there spread to the 

 nations of Northern and Western and Mediterranean Europe 

 an appreciation of gold perhaps not longer ago than four 

 or five thousand years. In the rocks of Egypt sufficient gold 

 was found at first to content the cupidity of the Semitic world ; 

 but later on the adventurous Arabs of Southern Arabia sought 

 for it in South-East Africa, while their Phoenician kindred 

 no doubt carried on a search in the Mediterranean world and 



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