"
Barclay went on, unmoving before the fire.
"I don't know why we imagine that the legends of a little tribe
in Syria running back to the fifth or sixth century begins the
world . . . . Anyway, Tavor got the notion, as I have said, of
an age in decay at about the time these legends start in; with a
trade moving west.
"He nosed it all out! God knows how. Of course it was only a
theory - only a notion in fact. He hadn't anything to go on that
I could see. But after two years' drifting about in the Shamo,
this is how he finally figured it:
"Northern Asia traded gold in the west; the mined product would
be molded into bricks in lower Mongolia. It was then carried
over land to the southwest coast of Arabia. There was some great
center of world commerce low down on the Red Sea about eight
hundred miles south of Port Said.
"Tavor said that when he began to think about the thing the
caravan route was pretty clear to him. Arabia seemed to have
been connected, in that remote age, with Persia at the Strait of
Ormus, so there was a direct overland route . . . . That put
another notion into Tavor's head; these treasure caravans must
have crossed the immense Sandy Desert of El-Khali.
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