THE POLISH GRAIN TRADE 205voyage and the time of year, and on varying demand. Those quoted by von
Lessenau in 1796 for a szkuta on the Zamosc-Danzig run were paid in ducats, in
addition to full board: shipper 100; secretary 50; quartermaster 20; master-boat-
man 24; steersman 14; cook 2; 15 sailors at 2-4 ducats: Total, 255.
Timing of the voyage was an important consideration. Grain prices in Danzig
fluctuated from season to season, and great efforts were made to effect delivery in
the early months of the year when prices were high. Producers from the far south
would usually consign their grain to the river in September and October, reach-
ing mid-way points for winter storage. But the main shipment began in the Spring,
as soon as the ice melted. Hence its name, the frujor (Friijahr), when scores of
rafts would race along the swollen waters of the Vistula to meet the foreign fleet.
In June and July, both the river and the market tended to be low, and traffic slight.
The gentleman-producer lacking his own transport was faced with three pos-
sibilities, therefore. Firstly he could sell his grain in the local market, where both
his costs and his receipts would be small. Secondly, he could sell it to a neigh-
bour or to a shipper - who would charge him commission to add it to shipments
of their own. Or thirdly, he could take it to Danzig himself. The last alternative
was both risky and adventurous, but it stood the best chance of making a good
profit, and for personal reasons was often the most attractive. In 1670, Jan
Chrystostom Pasek faced exactly this problem. Having leased a small property
at Smogorzow in Malopolska, he had succeeded in producing a modest surplus.
Some of his cronies advised him to stay at home, but, like the old soldier he was,
he decided to take his chance. In his Memoirs he relates how it paid off:
When I lived at Smogorzow, I went rafting for the first time. As I had no experience, 1
asked the advice of the old skippers and was told that up there (in Danzig) I'd be swin-
dled, being such a novice. By God's Grace, however, I sold my wheat for a higher price
than they did themselves. It happened like this. Two noblemen, Pieglowski, the District
Supervisor of Ujscie Solne, and Opacki, the Cup-Bearer of Warsaw, had quarrelled in
Danzig with a group of merchants, who thereupon decided to buy nothing from them at
all. I, being next in line, was paid 150 zloties for my wheat, just to spite those two. I sold
it to a Mr Jarlach. The others (from our convoy) had to plead with the merchants to do
business, and were then paid at only no zloties. Thus, they who had warned that I would
be fleeced, were fleeced themselves.^7
The annual voyage down the Vistula soon became a prominent institution of
Polish social life. Together with war, it provided one of the few occasions when
provincial noblemen could see the world at large, offering excitement and
adventure to generations of men whose experience was otherwise confined by
the bounds of their estates. It was a major cultural stimulus, spawning a rich
new vocabulary for the Polish language, and inspiring numerous works of prose
and verse, not least Sebastian Fabian Klonowic's poem Flis, to jest spuszczanie
statkow Wista i inszymi rzekami do niej przypadajqcymi, published in 1596.^8 Flis- whose title may be translated as 'Rafting, or the Descent of Ships on the
Vistula and on Other Rivers Flowing into it' - describes a river journey at
the end of the sixteenth century. It purports to be a handbook for the traveller