The First Wise Traveler to the West - The Wise World Traveler: Becoming a Part of All that You Meet - page 12

conquest in 1291, the knightly classes of Europe grew accustomed to the luxury goods of
the East: porcelain, playing cards, silks, and spices. To an aristocracy who had once eaten
from lead platters and wooden trenches (hence, our word for big eater, trencherman), por-
celain was an ultimate domestic luxury. It was outdone only by silk, a cloth so fine and so
beautifully dyed that some thought it had a sorcerer's provenance. And spices? Spices were
magic medicines: cloves for stomach disorders, oil of clove for toothaches, cinnamon for
fevers, nutmeg for flavor (an ingredient of Coca Cola), and above all, pepper. Pepper was
a remedy for fatigue (it helped build Egypt's pyramids), and it gave flavor to food. Some
historians assert that pepper also made putrid meat palatable.
No European knew precisely where these trade goods came from, only that they came
from the far-off Indies. Arabs knew, because Arab traders carried it in their dhows across
the ocean from India, Malay, and China. And Muslim lips were sealed. No European yet
knew about the monsoon, that steady wind that blows from west to east for six months
and then reverses direction for the rest of the year. Venice had received papal dispensation
to trade with the Muslim East, and Venice grew rich with the trade. As Wordsworth said
of Venice, “Once she did hold the gorgeous East in fee / And was the Safeguard of the
West.” [19]