Carpathians and through Sandec directly to Cracow; heavyfreighted wagons rolled upon it from Kassa (Kaschau) and all the wine-growing and mining districts of Northern Hungary, carrying copper, iron, oil, wax, and furs—and went back to Hungary again, laden with cloth of Flanders, Cracow, and Silesia, and salt of Wieliczka. From Cracow both Polish and foreign merchants started with wares Hungarian, Polish, and Oriental, on the most important route to Torun (now Thorn in Prussia), and continued their voyage on the Vistula to Gdansk (Danzig).
Sometimes they shipped their merchandise as far as the renowned town of Bruges, where the Hansa facilitated all transactions; not seldom they went even farther, viz., to the coasts of England. From the ports of Flanders they brought the famous cloths, also fish, wine, southern fruits, and works of art; no wonder, then, that some of the bronze plates, illuminated MSS., pictures, and products of applied art in Poland, turn out to be of Flemish origin. As early as during the reign of Casimir the Great, the merchants of Cracow had entered into close contact with the German Hansa, and at Lubeck they took part in its councils.
Another route leading from Cracow to the North connected Cracow with Great Poland, and, in its continuation by way of Stettin (Szczecin in Polish), with Flanders. To the east, the commercial routes from Cracow ran to the cities of Red Russia, reaching the colonies on the Black Sea, even to Kaffa, where the Genoese and Venetian vessels disembarked their cargo; from these, Cracow merchants chiefly took silks and spices. The expeditions to these far-off eastern ports were dangerous undertakings—although freedom of trade was guaranteed by privileges obtained from the Ruthenian princes—and they required brave and experienced men, able to face any danger. The armed caravans, generally combined into what was called a trading company, moved, in a long row of heavy wagons, through immeasurable steppes and wild forests in constant readiness for a fight, under the guidance of the most experienced member of the troop. Thus Nicholas Morstin, a Cracow merchant who led a caravan in 1386, had some hard fighting in Roumania (then called Wallachia),
