Page:History of India Vol 6.djvu/50

 16 THE CLOSING OF THE OLD TEADE PATHS snows and torrid wastes, rendered them available only for articles of small bulk. They never attained the importance to India which the two southern trade- routes, by the Syrian caravan track and by the sea- passage to Egypt, acquired. They formed, however, ancient paths between Europe and China, and received prominence from the blocking of the Syrian route in mediaeval times. From the Black Sea the products of the East went chiefly to Constantinople, but they also penetrated into Europe by the Danube and other channels. The trade appears to have helped toward the early civilization of the Crimea and the Danubian provinces. The em- porium of Theodosia on the Crimean coast was, like Phasis, originally a trading colony of the Milesians. It survived, although in decay, to the time of Arrian, and reappears in a variant of its modern name, Kaffa, under the Greek emperor who sent the embassy to Baghdad in 917 A. D. The Eastern trade by the Black Sea long formed a source of wealth to the Byzantine empire. Conflicts between Christian and Saracen in Syria enhanced its importance, and the Venetian merchants who settled at Constantinople when captured by the Crusaders in 1204, further developed the route. During the fifty- eight years of the Latin empire at Constantinople (1204 - 1261) the Venetians engrossed the Eastern com- merce by way of the Black Sea. Venice stretched her armed trading stations, practically in unbroken suc- cession, from the Adriatic to the Bosphorus, and stood