Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 1).djvu/518

 pointed out the many advantages which the situation of that port conferred upon its possessors with regard to the trade of the Mediterranean; advantages which might now be extended and materially developed by the passage for large vessels across the Isthmus of Suez, if the rulers of France would only adopt a more liberal and enlightened policy. We have likewise attempted to describe the commerce of Marseilles under the Roman Empire, which, so far as can now be traced, must have been of considerable importance; but, like other commercial towns, its early history, in connection with the business of shipping, is shrouded in doubt and in the mystery of romance.

Various writers, however, confirm the prevailing opinion that the shipping belonging to or frequenting Marseilles was very considerable during the dark and early part of the middle ages, as great numbers of pilgrims took their departure from that port to the Holy Land, although it is not until the time of the Crusades that we have any authentic records of the extent of the intercourse between the two places: however, from these records, it is manifest that trade attracted pilgrims to Jerusalem quite as much as devotion, or, at least, that one speculation by no means excluded the other. Though ready to mingle commerce with their devotion, there is no doubt that when the fervour for the Crusades rose to enthusiasm, the people of Marseilles were among the foremost in this infatuation. They not merely conveyed numbers of crusaders and pilgrims in their ships, but the noble families of Marseilles entered freely into these fanatical expeditions, while the city