The Natural History of Distant Lands (Sixteenth Century and Earlier). Travel and commerce had made the ancient world familiar with many products of distant countries. Well-established trade routes kept Europe in communication with Arabia, the Persian Gulf, and India. Egyptians, Phœnicians, and Greeks explored every known sea, and brought to Mediterranean ports a variety of foreign wares. Under the Roman empire strange animals were imported to amuse the populace; silk, pearls, gay plumage, dyes, and drugs to gratify the luxury of the rich. Long after the fall of the empire foreign trade was kept up along the coasts of the Mediterranean. Constantinople was still a great emporium. Silk was not only imported from the East, but cultivated around Constantinople in the sixth century. The cotton plant, the sugarcane, the orange tree, and the lemon tree gradually spread northward and westward until they became established in Italy, Spain, and the islands of the Mediterranean. Western Europe had during many centuries little share in this commerce. The large and conspicuous animals of Africa and Asia, such as the elephant, camel, camelopard, ostrich, pelican, parrot, and crocodile, would have passed out of knowledge altogether but for chance mention in the Bible and the Bestiaries. Little was done to supplement native food-plants and drugs by imported products, and the knowledge of foreign vegetation became as indistinct as that of foreign animals. In the thirteenth century communication between Western Europe and the far East was restored. China was thrown open by the Tartar conquest, and Marco Polo was able to reach the court of Khan Kublai. Pilgrims from the Holy Land brought back information which, however scanty it might be, was eagerly received. One of the earliest printed books (1486) contains the travels of Bernard of Breydenbach, a canon of Mainz, whose narrative is adorned by curious woodcuts, in which we can make out a giraffe and a long-tailed macaque.