(^206) HANDEL
setting out for the first time, and is full of detailed explanations and practical
hints. Like most works of the time, it affects an air of classical learning; but its
charm lies in the feelings of naive wonder and merry enjoyment which the voy-
age inspires. Having contrasted the homely, landlocked world of rural Poland
with the strange, foreign world of ships and the sea, Klonowic proceeds to tell
his reader how to divide his produce for sale and for keeping; how to buy a raft;
how to lay in provisions; how to doff his cap to the guildsmen; how to steer; and
above all how to deal with the Danzig merchants at his destination. He provides
a short glossary of rafting jargon, mainly German in origin, and warns against
the dangers of running aground, of hitting one of the sunken logs - which were
called wilki (wolves) - or fouling the moorings of a floating water-mill - which
from the characteristic noise of the mill-wheel were called bzdziely (farters), or
most embarrassingly, of colliding with the great wooden boom as one entered
the port of Danzig. On the fashionable model of Renaissance topography, he
also includes a detailed gazetteer of all the riverside landmarks from the bridge
at Warsaw to the Green Bridge in Danzig. One by one, all the towns, settle-
ments, islands, tributaries, boundaries, castles, abbeys, and churches, that can
be seen from the river, are mentioned, together with the associated historical
anecdotes or legends. There is Czerwinsk, with its convent of Lateran Canons;
Plock, with its tall cathedral crowned with two golden crosses; Wloclawek, with
its toll-house and brewery; Nieszawa, with its long red row of brick silos; and
the ruined castle of Zlotoriya; there is ancient Thorn:
... rich in Virtue,
Where the will of earnest burghers fosters
Peace and Modesty, where Honesty prospers
And Justice...
Thorn, whose towering walls, spires, and domes 'plough the sky'; there is the
River Brda, famous for its salmon; the Hell's Gate Rapids below Fordon;
Chelmno - river port for Ducal Prussia, Najburg, where Flemish settlers had
constructed an elaborate system of dykes; and the town of Gniewa, whose name
comes from the 'anger' of the River Nogat, who, jealous of 'Vanda Vistula,
daughter of Krakus the Dragon-King', flounced out of court and found her own
way to the sea. There were places to avoid — like the Nieznakowski Island above
Plock which harboured a notorious clan of bandits, or another island by the
bridge at Thorn inhabited by the city's venereal outlaws. But there were places,
too, where every rafter should call - like the Church of St. Barbara, at Sartawice,
where the hymn of their patroness 'was sung by the boatmen and learned by the
apprentices', or like the 'Ganskrug', 'the Goose Inn', where one took one's last
refreshment before crossing the Danzig boom.
Most memorable, perhaps, is Klonowic's picture of the Polish traveller when
'like a true knight', he actually enters Danzig. Gazing in wonder at the granaries,
the vast warehouses for timber and potash, the 'artful' elevators and cranes, the
sluices, weighbridges, engines, turntables, and not least at the ocean-going