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

Hemp,Flax, and Iron: The Russian ViewRiga, described these caravans as being composed of twenty orthirty one-horse or one-"steer" (ox?) conveyances, with onema n and a boy in chargeof the whole caravan; the ma n rides and drives the leadinghorse, all the others follow in a direct line, while the boybrings up the rear, and so they follow another by night andday; the drivers clothed in sheepskins and nestled instraw. . . . Th e price of horned cattle and horses is extremelylow, while the wages of the peasants and workingclasses are merely nominal; consequently, the transportation ofgoods from place to place, even at a great distance, must bevery reasonable. 17Reasonable, indeed! It was less expensive, for example, to shipfreight by these sledges from Mosco w to the Baltic than theequivalent distance by sea. Compar e this with the cost offreighting by land in the United States, as described above byDaniel Webster.Whe n spring freed the rivers from ice, the traffic to the seabegan. Hemp , flax, tallow, timber came floating down (orpainfully up ) the great rivers. Th e most impressive is thethousand-mile journey of iron from the Urals to the Baltic.From the mines and shops in the mountains it has beendragged, slid, rolled, and generally roughnecked to the banksof the Kam a River. It is loaded on barks (we would call thembarges) andfloated down the Kama, to the Volga, then up theVolga. (To w several tons of iron u p a river by the strength ofyour back, and the dreary chant of "The Volga Boatmen"becomes muc h more meaningful.) Wher e the Volga forks inits upper reaches, the iron-laden barks are towed into theVishney Volotshok Canal. Onc e through this canal, the need33