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The National Geographic Magazine 



routes being closed, and this trade was 

 doing its share to awake into conscious- 

 ness the vast inert mass of wandering 

 men in the northern Asian Plain with 

 results later apparent. The only fruit 

 of the shock between the East and the 

 West from Nicaea to Edessa.from Edessa 

 to Montroj^al, was to leave no one east- 

 ern power equal to the eruption of the 

 Mongol swarm when it burst on the 

 world just after the close of the crusades. 

 These hordes from the north had poured 

 through the open gate which the exten- 

 sion of the provinces of the Caliphate 

 into Transoxiana had provided. First 

 the Turkoman of the Oxus came, later 

 Chingiz' Mongols, in the center of the 

 Northern Plain, and last the more civ- 

 ilized organization of Timur. From 

 Novgorod to Pekin, over the entire 

 stretch of the Great Plain in which the 

 Urals are so small an interruption; from 

 Siberia to India, their descendants ruled. 

 Their only check came in the Ayyubid 

 dynasty, founded by Saladin, which the 

 crusades had consolidated, and which 

 held the ends of the trade routes that 

 found their way up the Red Sea and 

 across the caravan routes to the ports 

 of Syria. In all the annals of the 

 relations of this region, for the first 

 time the Asian swarms closed all the 

 traffic b}^ land. The route north of the 

 Black Sea, which had so often been 

 opened when all others were shut, 

 was in their hands. The lines which 

 passed across Persia were blocked by 

 all the internecine feuds whose rapine 

 darkens the Quatrains of Omar. In- 

 stantly a new relation was established. 

 The real close of the crusades is the 

 treaty between Venice and an Ayyubid 

 Sultan of Egypt, Adil, 1208, by which 

 the city of the Adriatic obtained a 

 monopoly of the trade of the East. 

 Straightway there arose in Cairo and 

 every Italian city those buildings, the 

 mosques and tombs of Ayyubid and 

 Mameluke sultans, and the churches of 

 the later Romanesque and earlier re- 



naissance. In every age, wherever 

 the opportunity of levying toll upon 

 this traffic between the East and the 

 West comes, there also buildings rise 

 and a new architecture is born — from 

 the Ziggurats of Babylonia to the dome 

 of St. Paul's, itself the first fruits of 

 that growing trade which marked Eng- 

 land' s appearance in the East. Through 

 nearly two centuries of the free-flowing 

 profit of Italy, the narrow duct through 

 which flowed the trade of the East, was 

 the open way kept by the independent 

 government of Egypt in close commu- 

 nication with the small republics of the 

 peninsula. When the Othman Sultan, 

 Selim, in 151 7, swept over Egypt the 

 last shred of the passageway which na- 

 ture has provided between the Asian 

 and the European centers of population 

 passed into the hands of the represent- 

 atives of the northern flood which had 

 first burst forth when Hulaku ended 

 the civil power of the Abasside five cen- 

 turies before. The flask of pepper in- 

 stantly arose from six to eightfold in the 

 markets of Europe. Sugar increased 

 in proportion. The trade of the Italian 

 cities was ruined. The trade routes along 

 which the cities of central Europe had 

 grown were swept with bankruptc3\ 

 There succeeded an economic convul- 

 sion such as always accompanies every 

 shift in the channel of this great trade, 

 which had no small share in precipitat- 

 ing the Reformation, acting not so _ 

 much as cause as furnishing the occa- 

 sion for the sudden appearance of a 

 growing ferment. 



First Portugal and then northern Eu- 

 rope, since all paths across the bridge 

 were at last held and closed, began their 

 attempts to find a way around the con- 

 tinent of Africa. Out of this attempt 

 grew the voyage of Columbus. Through 

 successive maritime discoveries the 

 northern half of Europe made its con- 

 nection with the Asiatic centers by sea 

 instead of by land, and there canie that 

 fission in faith, in trade, and in devel- 



