CHAPTER XI
THE WAY FROM INDIA TO-DAY
WE have seen that the spices of India came, long years ago, partly by land and partly by water, and that the tea, in later years, was brought all the way by sea round the southern end of Africa. Tea and spices still come to us from the Far East, but they do not come by either of the routes that we have already described. And, to-day, the ships bring us not only spices and tea, but also rice, wheat, timber, and many other useful and valuable things.
The Arab trade was partly over the land, and the great difficulty was to carry the goods. It would have cost a great deal of money and trouble to have carried, say, timber overland on the backs of animals, and therefore bulky stuff like timber was not carried at all. Spices and precious stones were smaller, lighter, worth more, and more easily carried, and the cost of carriage was nob so very great when compared with the value of the things carried. Hence the early trade was in goods that were light but worth a great deal of money. It was for this
87