The First Wise Traveler to the West - The Wise World Traveler: Becoming a Part of All that You Meet - page 13

Figure 2.1. Entry of the Crusaders
into Constantinople (Gustave Doré)
Pepper had come across the oceans from India, silks by way of the Silk Road across
desert and mountains from China, and spices from a tiny cluster of islands (The Spiceries)
from the Indonesian archipelago. At every caravansary, at each trans-shipping point, the
cost of cargo increased. Goods bought for copper at their points of origin sold for gold at
their final destination. Where would men not go for pepper? For a bag of pepper, writes
Joseph Conrad in Lord Jim, they “would cut each other's throats without hesitation and
would foreswear their souls…defy death…and strange diseases…” [20] Venice was the con-
duit of the luxury trade, and Portugal, the maritime nation at the western edge of Europe,
schemed to break the conduit.