With all the prizes at the great shooting feasts large and small banners were presented, with the colours of the town or country, and the arms or garlands, painted on them, and often also the value of the prize. To bear away such a banner was a great honour. The strangers took them proudly to their homes, and delivered them to the council of their city, or to their shooting brotherhood, who had paid the costs of their journey. Very modest at first were the prizes of the victors: they were long designated as "ventures:" a romantic charm still attached to the foreign word, which originated in the jargon of the old tournaments. A fine ram was the first prize at Munich about 1400, and at Kelheim in 1404. Soon afterwards an ox, a horse, or a bull, and the animals often covered with a valuable cloth: thus, in 1433, at Nueremberg, a horse covered with a red cloth was the best. The secondary prizes were small goblets, silver vases, girdles, cross-bows, swords, or a prize which has always been a special object of preference with the inferior shooters, and everywhere, up to modern times, has clung to shooting societies--material for a beautiful pair of small-clothes. He who came from the greatest distance to the shooting, received, at Augsburg, in 1425, a golden ring. But at the same place, in 1440, the first prize was already a sum of money, forty gulden; and the horses and cattle were the last. They rose rapidly in value at Augsburg in 1470; 101 gulden was the best, and about 1500 this sum became usual: in 1504, at Zurich, 110 gulden was the chief prize, 90 the second, and so in succession down to one gulden, all doubled for cross-bows and guns, and, which is not rare at the Swiss shooting meetings, all in money. The prizes continued to rise in value; at Leipzig, in 1550, for the cross-bow 300 gulden; at the great shooting meeting at Strasburg, in 1576, the first prize for rifle and gun was 210 Imperial gulden; at Basle, in 1603, for muskets (with rifled barrels), a goblet worth 300 gulden. This sum, according to the value of silver and corn, answers to 666 thalers of our money.