gmertca, , ?|emp, an& JUapoleon - Vote Hemp

America, Russia, Hemp,and Napoleonbothflanksof the Skagerak (Norway, you remember, is Danish),from Denmar k proper, and from Zealand, and fromBornholm and other islands in the Baltic. The Danes andNorwegians devised "telegraph" systems to warn of approachingsails: sentinels stationed high in the hills along the coastpeering over the far edge of the beach-dweller's horizon tosignal privateers waiting below to the attack long before theprivateers or their prey saw each other. Thus it was impossiblefor any American—fraudulent or real—to pass through thenarrows to the Baltic and Kronstadt between 1807 and 1812without knowing that he was constantly under the gimlet eyeof one or several or a hundred plunder-hungry Danes. 27Danes, particularly hungry ones, found it very difficult to tellan American vessel from a British; and whe n they did seize areal American, they were inclined to assume, too often withjustification, that the Bostonian or Ne w Yorker or Philadelphianwas sailing on British account. That the captain andcrew of a privateer got a good percentage of whatever theybrought in and persuaded the courts to condemn was not, ofcourse, inclined to blunt their eagerness or sharpen their discernment.Shortly after the melting ice admitted shipping to the Balticin 1808, the Danish privateers brought in the "Margaret,"Captain Alexander Clark, allegedly of Baltimore bound intothe Baltic from Charleston. A bit later the "Jermina andFanny," Captain Jacob Sherburne, allegedly of Charlestonbound for Russia, and the "Galen," Captain Stedman, allegedlyof Boston bound from London to Russia, were captured.These were thefirstof scores and scores of vessels seized and120