Page:The story of geographical discovery.djvu/84

 80 realise how largely Europe after the Crusades was dependent on the East for most of the luxuries of life. Nothing produced by the looms of Europe could equal the silk of China, the calico of India, the muslin of Mussul. The chief gems which decorated the crowns of kings and nobles, the emerald, the topaz, the ruby, the diamond, all came from the East—mainly from India. The whole of mediæval medical science was derived from the Arabs, who sought most of their drugs from Arabia or India. Even for the incense which burned upon the innumerable altars of Roman Catholic Europe, merchants had to seek the materials in the Levant. For many of the more refined handicrafts, artists had to seek their best material from Eastern traders: such as shellac for varnish, or mastic for artists' colours (gamboge from Cambodia, ultramarine from lapis lazuli); while it was often necessary, under mediæval circumstances, to have resort to the musk or opopanax of the East to counteract the odours resulting from the bad sanitary habits of the West. But above all, for the condiments which were almost necessary for health, and certainly desirable for seasoning the salted food of winter and the salted fish of Lent, Europeans were dependent upon the spices of the Asiatic islands. In Hakluyt's great work on "English Voyages and Navigations," he gives in his second volume a list, written out by an Aleppo merchant, William Barrett, in 1584, of the places whence the chief staples of the eastern trade came, and it will be interesting to give a selection from his long account.