8. Write a report on one of the following topics:
(a) The great fairs of Europe. [Horne, Harper’s Magazine, vol. 46, p. 376.]
(b) The fair of Nijni Novgorod. [T. Child, Harper’s Magazine, vol. 79, p. 670.]
(c) Kentucky fairs. [James Lane Allen, Harper’s Magazine, vol. 79, p. 553.]
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Gross, Sources, has no separate section on fairs, but includes a number of books on them, to be found by consulting the index. A bibliography will be found also in the article **Fairs, by John Macdonald, in the Encyc. Brit.; this article can be heartily recommended to teacher and student. For modern fairs see Poole’ s Index of Periodical Lit. Bourne, Romance of trade, devotes chap. 3 to fairs.
CHAPTER IX
SEA TRADE
77. Rise of sea commerce. The Scandinavians.—We might suppose, in view of the difficulties and dangers of travel on land, that the trade of Europe would have been forced to the sea during the feudal period. In the last two centuries of the Middle Ages there was, in fact, a growth of maritime commerce which prepared the way for the great discoveries and the oceanic period of modern commerce. Before this period, however, the means of navigation were still so slight that regular and extended commerce on the sea was the exception rather than the rule.
In Northern Europe the Scandinavians were the leaders in the development of navigation. We get an idea of the ships that they used from one which was discovered a few years ago in a burial mound in southern Norway, where it had been preserved since the ninth century, it is supposed. It is an open boat, clinker built, and fashioned to go in either direction; it is about 75 feet long, and has places for 15 oars on each side, but no arrangement for a sail. Similar boats, with the addition of a rudder and hutch at each end, are still used in the Lofoten Islands. They are well suited to carry passengers along the coast, but have small cargo capacity, and, of course, are unfit for long sea voyages. The Scandinavian Vikings, indeed, used them mainly for raiding and piracy, and in them harried for centuries the coasts of western Europe, with a recklessness which accorded with their warlike character. A chronicle speaks of Danes who were tossed about for nearly a month before they made their landing in England. Along with these war vessels the Scandinavians must have had some cargo-ships, the details of which are unknown to us; a modern writer conceives them to have been clumsy and slow, “tub-shaped, round-bowed, and flat-bottomed.” Sailing ships were certainly used from a very early period.
78. Development of shipping in Northern Europe.—The Bayeux tapestry, which pictures the events of the conquest of England by the Normans in 1066, shows what was substantially the Viking type of vessel to have been used in that expedition; the boats were undecked, and several foundered at anchor before starting. A modern writer thinks that few were over 30 tons in size, and that none carried over 40 or 50 men. About two centuries later the seals of Sandwich and Dover show a ship still undecked, but provided with a rudder working over the side, fighting platforms at bow and stern, and a mast with a crow’s-nest at the top. It is doubtful how far we can trust representations such as these on the tapestry and seal, which were often executed by persons unfamiliar with the object and were sure to be conventional. We can, if we choose, follow the statements in the chronicles, which would make the ships much larger, holding a hundred men or even several hundred; the chronicles are notorious, however, for the constant exaggeration in matters of statistics, and the truth lies probably somewhere in between our two sources of information. Down to the fifteenth century the single mast with the square sail was the usual rig. Some vessels, however, carried two masts, one near the center and one toward the bow, and could spread six sails. For shorter trips and for the coasting trade smaller boats were used, sometimes propelled only by oars.