What was the volume of this trade between the Orient and the Occident, especially after the establishment of the _Pax Romana_ under Augustus, may be gauged by the fact that the unprecedented demand by the fashionable world of Rome for all kinds of eastern luxuries for a while seriously imperiled the imperial finances. In the single item of aromatics for funerals, the extravagance indulged in seems incredible. At the obsequies of Sulla, before the time of Augustus, more than twelve thousand pounds of precious spices were consumed, while Nero had more expensive aromatics burnt on the funeral pyre of Poppœa than Arabia produced in a year. When, after the destruction of Bagdad by Hulaku Khan, Tabriz in Persia became the great political and commercial city of Asia, it was by the Euxine that the merchant princes of Venice and Genoa conducted their commerce with the Middle and Far East. Passing through the Hellespont and the Bosphorus, their galleys proceeded to Kaffa in the Crimea which was their chief _entrepôt_ on the Euxine. From this point the enterprising traders continued their course by way of the Sea of Azov, the Don, and the Volga to a port on the Caspian Sea. Thence their caravans started on their long overland journey over lofty mountains and through vast deserts and hostile nations to far distant Cathay in quest of the highly-prized commodities of Chinese kilns and looms. Other traders went directly by sea from Kaffa to Trebizond whence they journeyed over broad, arid plains to Tabriz. Here their numerous caravans were laden with the rich fabrics of Persia and the rare products of India and the Isles of Spicery. From these centers of Asiatic traffic, long lines of patient camels transported their precious burdens to ports on the Euxine where a fleet of Genoese and Venetian galleys was waiting to receive the merchandise collected at so much risk and at the cost of so much labor and which was subsequently distributed among the expectant marts of southern Europe.[33] Before embarking at Sulina for Constantinople, I almost dreaded the voyage to the Bosphorus. From the time of the Argonauts the tempestuous Euxine has been a byword among mariners and the dread of travelers who have to trust themselves to its storm-lashed waves. In the words of Ovid its fury was inferior only to the turbulence of the fierce barbarians among whom he was exiled. I had prepared myself to endure for a day all the horrors which characterize a rough passage across the English channel. Nor were my fears entirely groundless. The sea was heavy,--the weather was squally. Many of the passengers, unwilling to trust themselves on deck, sought the seclusion of their staterooms. As for myself, I did not feel reassured until we had finally entered the more protected waters of the Bosphorus. Even at the entrance of this famous channel the voyager may, at times, experience great discomfort. Byron states the reason in the well-known stanza of Don Juan: