THE NATURAL HISTORY OF DISTANT LANDS 53 



first book of Maccabees, it was often confounded with 

 the camel. ^ Monkeys, lions, leopards and lynxes were 

 still well known. 



Of the acquisitions made between the years 200 and 

 1000 A.D. none perhaps was more considerable than the 

 importation of the silkworm in the reign of Justinian. 

 Constantinople was during many centuries the great 

 European emporium of eastern wares. 



The wars of Saracens and Christians did little for 

 geographical knowledge or industry to compensate for 

 the interruption of peaceful intercourse which they 

 created. In the thirteenth century the passionate zeal 

 which had stirred up so many Holy Wars died out, 

 but travel and exploration revived as the progressive 

 movement (see pp. 7, 9) gained strength. Towards 

 the end of the thirteenth century Marco Polo and his 

 companions reached China (Cathay, as it was then 

 called) by land, taking advantage of that relaxation of 

 restrictions which followed upon the conquests of the 

 Tartars. The barriers were soon restored, and China 

 became once more impenetrable. Elsewhere geographical 

 knowledge and commerce advanced steadily. Venice, 

 Genoa and Florence became enriched by eastern trade. 

 Dates, balsams and flax were regularly imported from 

 Egypt ; the sugar-cane was planted in the islands of 

 the Mediterranean, and cotton in the south of Europe. 

 In the sixteenth century, and indeed long before, the 

 northern parts of Spain supplied Europe with whale- 

 bone and train-oil, sending their ships out into the 

 Atlantic to capture the Right Whale. 



^ We read however of an elephant sent to Charlemagne by Haroun-al- 

 Raschid, and of another given to our Henry III. by Louis IX. of France ; 

 there is a tolerable though small figure of one in the Meditationes of Johannes 

 de Turrecremata, Rome, 1467. A girafTo was imported by the emperor 

 Frederick II. in the thirteenth century. 



