Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 1).djvu/470

 great advantage to Venice, Genoa, and Aragon; but, towards the close of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth century Bruges was surpassed by Antwerp, where, after the discovery of the passage to India by the Cape, Flemish vessels trading with the East landed their cargoes. Antwerp had, indeed, previously to that period enjoyed a large and profitable maritime commerce. Apart from the many advantages which the port possessed, the liberal policy established by the Duke of Brabant and the privileges he conferred on foreigners had induced English, German, Genoese, and Florentine merchants to make it a rendezvous for their ships, and a depôt for storing their goods, whence they were distributed throughout the continent and the whole of the north of Europe.

Some idea may be formed of the importance of Flanders and the Low Countries, and how they then surpassed all the other nations of northern Europe in wealth and commercial enterprise, from the fact that Ghent had no less than forty thousand looms constantly at work in the manufacture of cotton and woollen cloths. She likewise supplied in great abundance, and of superior quality, serges, fustians, and tapestries. Courtray possessed, in the sixteenth century, six thousand weavers' looms; Ypres, four thousand, which produced very fine cloths, especially those of the scarlet colour so frequently specified in the tariffs of the countries of the South and East; while the Cloth Hall of that place was considered one of the most beautiful edifices of all Flanders. Oudenarde supplied tapestries which rivalled those of Arras: Tournay was famed for a peculiar de