THE UNTOUCHABLES AND THE PAX BRITANNICA 79
Another question is why was a direct sea route necessary for these European nations to reach India and to obtain spices. Before the European nations discovered the sea route to India via the Cape of Good Hope there were in existence three well established land routes by which these luxuries and spices used to reach Europe and known as the Northern, the Middle and the Southern routes.
The Northern route lay between the Far-East and the West, extending from the inland provinces of China westward across the great desert of Gobi, south of the Celestial mountains to Lake Lop then passing through a series of ancient cities, Khotan, Yarkand, Kashgar, Samaro and Bokhara, till it finally reached the region of the Caspian Sea. This main northern route was joined by others which crossed the passes of the Himalayas and the Hindookush, and brought into a United Stream, the products of India and China. A journey of eighty to a hundred days over desert, mountain, and steppes lay by this route between the Chinese wall and the Caspian. From still farther north in China a parallel road to this passed to the north of the desert and the mountains and by way of Lake Balkash, to the same ancient and populous land lying to the east of the Caspian Sea. Here the caravan routes again divided. Some led to the south-westward, where they united with the more central routes described above and eventually reached the Black Sea and the Mediterranean through Asia Minor and Syria. Others passed by land around the northern coast of the Caspian, or crossed it, reaching a further stage at Astrakhan. From Astrakhan the way led on by the Volga and on rivers, till its terminus was at last reached on the Black Sea at Tana near the mouth of the Don, or at Kaffa in the Crimea.
The Middle route lay through Mesopotamia and Syria to the Levant. Ships from India crept along the Asiatic shore to the Persian Gulf, and sold their costly freights in the marts of Chaldea or the lower Euphrates. A line of trading cities extending along its shores from Ormuz near the mouth of the gulf to Bassorah at its head served as ports of call for the vessels which carried this