fortunate ship and of the parent town"--were paid by the city of Zurich. In return they received the small silver utensils which were won in the urn by the Zurichers. The collective costs of the journey which Zurich then paid for its marksmen amounted to 1500 gulden. It is of great interest to consider these brotherly festivals of the city communities, according to districts. In the middle of the sixteenth century, a journey from Nuremburg to Augsburg was neither so easy nor free from danger, as now from Leipsig to Zurich. The birds of prey of the country gladly flew from their castellated eyries into the woods which surrounded, in wide circles, the hospitable city; more than once was the fortunate marksman waylaid and robbed, by noble horsemen, of the beautiful purse with the guldens he had won, and his banner broken. Even to greater companies the road was insecure, and the travelling toilsome; the inns at small places were frequently very bad, without meat or drink. It is easily understood that at the largest prize-shooting, to which every unexceptional man was welcome, persons from a distance only took a part when accident had brought them into the neighbourhood. Therefore it is matter of surprise that the district to which cities sent their invitations was so large. The Wittenburghers were welcome guests at Ratisbon and the men of Stuttgart at Meissen. Sometimes accident or the friendship of distinguished citizens, knit these bonds of hospitality betwixt far-distant cities; then the invitations went forty, fifty, or one hundred miles. But, on the whole, we may divide these hospitable cities into groups. The Swiss, Suabians, and Bavarians were in close union. Augsburg, more than Nuremberg, was long the centre and pattern of these groups. To it belonged the Rhine as far as Strasbourg. The greatest and most splendid prize-shootings were for two centuries celebrated in this part of Germany. In Bavaria, about 1400, all the more powerful places were in firm intercommunion. There, the city whose marksmen, at one shooting, had won the first prize, was bound at the next shooting festival to produce the same first prize. Thus Kehlheim, which had won the ram at Munich, invited the Munichers, in 1404, to contend for it again.[71] But smaller festivals also comprehended a wide circle. At Ratisbon, for example, the Bavarians and Suabians shot with the larger cities of Thuringia and Meissen; also with Lindau, Salzburg, and some places in Bohemia. The Tyrolese and Salzburghers collected more especially at small shooting meetings of their districts; so also the Franconians north of the Maine. A lasting union of middle-sized and smaller places existed there. This Franconian union comprehended in the sixteenth century, together with Wuerzburg and Schweinfurt, forty-one cities and forty-two villages with free peasants, particularly from the bishopric of Wuerzburg and the royal county of Henneberg.