The Venetians, who were thus driven from a most lucrative commerce, endeavoured to compensate for their loss by extending their power and commerce in other quarters:  they claimed and received a toll on all vessels navigating the Adriatic, especially from those sailing between the south-point of Istria and Venice.  But their commerce and power on the Adriatic could be of little avail, unless they regained at least a portion of that traffic in Indian merchandize, which at this period formed the grand source of wealth.  Constantinople, and consequently the Black Sea, was shut up from them:  on the latter the Genoese were extending their traffic; they had seized on Caffa from the Tartars, and made it the principal station of their commerce.  The Venetians in this emergency looked towards the ancient route to India, or rather the ancient depot for Indian goods,—­ Alexandria:  this city had been shut against Christians for six centuries; but it was now in the possession of the sultan of the Mamalukes, and he was more favourable to them.  Under the sanction of the Pope, the Venetians entered into a treaty of commerce with the sultans of Egypt; by which they were permitted to have one consul in Alexandria, and another in Damascus.  Venetian merchants and manufacturers were settled in both these cities.  If we may believe Sir John de Mandeville, their merchants frequently went to the island of Ormus and the Persian Gulf, and sometimes even to Cambalu.  By their enterprize the Indian trade was almost entirely in their possession; and they distributed the merchandize of the East among the nations of the north of Europe, through Bruges and the Hanseatic League, and traded even directly in their own vessels to England.

In the beginning of the fifteenth century, the annual value of the goods exported from Venice amounted to ten millions of ducats; and the profits on the home and outward voyages, were about four millions.  Their shipping consisted of 3000 vessels, of from 10 to 200 amphoras burden, carrying 17,000 sailors; 300 ships with 8000 seamen; and 45 gallies of various sizes, manned by 11,000 seamen.  In the dock-yard, 16,000 carpenters were usually employed.  Their trade to Syria and Egypt seems to have been conducted entirely, or chiefly, by ready money; for 500,000 ducats were sent into those countries annually:  100,000 ducats were sent to England.  From the Florentines they received annually 16,000 pieces of cloth:  these they exported to different ports of the Mediterranean; they also received from the Florentines 7000 ducats weekly, which seems to have been the balance between the cloth they sold to the Venetians, and the French and Catalan wool, crimson grain, silk, gold and silver thread, wax, sugar, violins, &c., which they bought at Venice.  Their commerce, especially the oriental branch of it, increased; and by the conquest of Constantinople by the Turks, the consequence of which was the expulsion of the Genoese, they were enabled, almost without