The calculations of Venice, growing with her growth, impressed on her national consciousness the importance of her position midway between the East and the West--her geographical qualification for becoming the mart of the world. With steady and concentrated purpose she devoted her energy to opening up fresh channels of communication. Sometimes by the marriage of a son or daughter of the Doge with the heir of a kingdom or a prince of Constantinople, sometimes by the subjugation of a common foe, Venice wove new threads of intercourse with the East. She always took payment for benefits she conferred in wider trading advantages. Her merchant vessels were not private adventures, they represented state enterprise and were under the control of the central government, travelling with the fleet and capable of reinforcing it at need. Seven merchant convoys left Venice annually for Roumania, Azof, Trebizond, Cyprus, Armenia, France, England, Flanders, Spain, Portugal and Egypt. By means of these vessels the glories of the Orient found their way to the lands of the West; Venice was mistress of the treasures of Arabia, and became their dispenser to Europe. And she was not merely a mart, a counter of interchange; she tested the goods at their source; she was not at the mercy of valuers, her citizen travellers came into touch with the goods on the soil that produced them. The East, to which the art of Venice owes much of its material--its gold, its gems, its colours--was not an unfathomed mine but, in a certain sense, a pleasure-ground for her citizens; they passed to and fro familiarly, guests of its greatest potentates. They stood face to face with Cublay Kaan, the monarch of mystery.