From earliest times commercial relations between the land of Cathay and Europe had been one-sided. The east sold and the west purchased. There was very little exchange. The products which came from the east could all be classed as luxuries. They constituted freight of small volume such as precious stones, fine woods, essence and spices, the value of which generally ran high. These commodities had been shipped to Europe for about two millenniums prior to the fourteenth century of our era. Overland the caravans plowed their way across the southern expanse of Russia’s interminable steppeland and penetrated finally into the plateaus of Iran and Anatolia. Their home stretch lay in Turkey. By sea the traders were accustomed to end their journeys at the head of the Persian Gulf, whence the valuable wares would be shipped farther west via Mesopotamia. In this case again the home stretch is found on Turkish soil. It was not until about the end of the fourth century B.C. when the Egyptian hamlet of Rhaecotis changed its name into that of Alexandria, that this sea route was extended into the Red Sea and Mediterranean. At this time the vision of acquiring wealth through the eastern trade began to dawn on the minds of the inhabitants of the Mediterranean seaboard. Many centuries were to elapse, however, before westerners realized that fortunes could be made by venturing into eastern fields. The profits and the splendor of the eastern trade were popularized by Christendom when the accounts of Marco Polo and the friar travelers of his time became available. Then the ambition of every adventurous merchant was to act as middleman in the trade with Cathay. The bulk of the east-west trade in medieval time flowed through the same two main arteries. The northern land route from China through central Asia passed through the Tabriz and Erzerum gates and ended at Trebizond, the rest of the journey being made by sea through the Bosporus-Dardanelles passage. The southerly course was an all-water route from the sea of China to the Mediterranean.