62 THE DISCOVERY OF AUSTRALIA 



Christians as willingly as they listened to Mahomedans and 

 to Buddhists. Western Asia, and especially the seaports 

 of the East Mediterranean coast, were in the hands of 

 Arabian powers of an old and advanced civilization, willing 

 to make terms with the Italian merchant cities for the 

 distribution of Eastern luxuries through the world of the 

 West. 



Travel But now great changes took place. In 1368-1370 a 



(i^he y nat; ional Chinese movement overthrew the Mongol dynasty, 

 doctrine of established the doctrine of a Yellow China, and drove forth 

 ChimTand " strangers of irregulated morals " with their " profane and 

 (2) Turkish foreign novelties." 1 Meanwhile the Ottoman Turks, a 

 fierce race of primitive 'savages, hating Christianity and 

 despising commerce, had started, about the year 1300, from 

 the heart of Asia on the career of conquest that was step 

 by step to make them masters of Western Asia, including 

 the seaport towns of the Mediterranean. Venetians and 

 Genoese were driven from the Black Sea and from Con- 

 stantinople, driven from the seaports of Asia Minor, Syria 

 and Egypt, and, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, 

 were fighting back-to-wall a desperate defensive warfare, 

 which threatened to end in the destruction of their trade 

 in the Mediterranean itself. Europe could only acquiesce. 

 The age of effective crusade had passed. The Pope could 

 no longer stir religious enthusiasm to accomplish God's 

 will. The emperor had no authority outside Germany, 

 and very little authority inside Germany. The rivalry of 

 national dynasties had destroyed all possibility of a 

 Concert of Europe. Neither the religious motive nor the 

 commercial motive sufficed to unite Christendom in an 

 effective resistance to the Turks. It was not till 1572 that 

 the battle of Lepanto inflicted serious defeat on the Turkish 

 navy, and removed the fear that the Mediterranean was 

 destined to become a Turkish lake. 



The New And yet the Western world was far from being willing 



the New to acquiesce in exclusion from the East. In all lands of 



Nations. Europe commerce was becoming more enterprising and 



more profitable, wealth was accumulating, the demand for 



1 Beazley, vol. i. p. 186. 



