Not only, however, had the internal markets grown larger, the external market had also extended enormously, and it was no longer for the spices and gems of the Levant alone that ships and caravans set out. In the South, Vasco da Gama had discovered the route to the Indies; in the West, Christopher Columbus, while seeking those same Indies, had come upon America; in the North, Russia and Scandinavia had proved to be magnificent fields for traders to exploit. Africa, which as yet no one had dared to penetrate, was approached and the existence of Oceania suspected. Europe, in revenge for old invasions, overflowed in her turn into other continents; she expanded into distant colonies; the sun no longer set on her possessions. The first result was a rearrangement of commercial routes, a formidable rush to the West. The Mediterranean basin, cut off from the East by the Turks, ceased to be the meeting-place of nations and the universal centre of commerce. Genoa and Florence, the mothers and glorious victims of Columbus and Amerigo Vespucci, began to decay, and the very source of their wealth was assailed by the discoveries of their children. Beneath the trappings of gold and silk that yet covered them there was left only the melancholy glory of their dying prosperity. Venice the rich, Venice the beautiful, slumbering in the fever-laden air of her canals from which the life was ebbing, slowly died in her gorgeous setting of palaces and churches and degenerated into a city of dreams, luxury, and pleasure, where the leisured and the gay came to seek the shadow of a great past and the splendours of a half-oriental civilization. Many cities, like Pisa or Siena, deserved with Bruges to be called "the dead," cut off from the ocean by the encroaching sands and from liberty by the Spanish lords of Flanders. How could the guilds hope to escape from the consequences of misfortunes which struck at their very roots? An even graver menace threatened them. To take advantage of the new outlets, to satisfy a clientèle henceforth scattered over the most diverse countries, it was necessary to produce more, and to produce more it was necessary to produce in a different way. Production was transformed to meet the needs of trade. Capitalism, which had hitherto been confined to a few towns, received an impetus and developed with unexpected vigour.