CHAPTER IV. Primaeval Trade Routes.

There can be little doubt that from the extreme West of Europe to Northern India, or rather to China and the Pacific shore, there was complete intercourse in the way of trade, from the most remote epochs. In the lake dwellings of Switzerland are found implements of Jade, a stone which is not found at any spot in Europe; in fact the nearest point from which the material was fetched must have been Eastern Turkestan on the borders of China¹. If in neolithic days such communication existed between Further Asia and Western Europe, it is not unreasonable to suppose that when gold, an article existing in almost every country across the two continents, came into use, a like facility of intercourse must have existed. In one of the passages of Herodotus which I have given above we had explicit information respecting a trade route extending from the Greek factories on the northern shores of the Black Sea through the medium of the Scythians right away to the remote region of the Altai. On the other hand there is good evidence for the existence of a great trade route from the Black Sea westward up the valley of the Danube, and so reaching the head of the Adriatic; and again, there is equally good reason for believing that from the mouth of the Po there ran a similar route across Northern Italy through Liguria and Narbonese Gaul and into Spain. In reference to the first of these routes we may quote a tradition preserved in the Book of Wonderful Stories before alluded to. It is there stated that once on a time travellers who had voyaged up the Danube finally by a branch of that river which flowed into the Adriatic made their way into that Sea. It is there alleged² that “there is a mountain called Delphium between Mentorice and Istriana, which has a lofty peak. Whenever the Mentores who dwell on the Adriatic mount this crest,