vessel; whoever attempts to draw weapons on board, be they long or short, shall have the respective weapon run through his hand into the mast, so that he will have to draw the weapon through his own hand again if he would free himself; whoever accuses another unjustly shall pay the double fine prescribed for the offence charged; and no one shall endeavor to take revenge upon the executioners.  Upon the completion of the voyage the court resigned, after dispensing a general amnesty and partaking of bread and salt in company with the rest of the crew.  Upon landing, the monetary fines which had been collected from delinquents on board were presented to the lord of the strand for benevolent distribution.

On arriving at the end of his journey the merchant was confronted by new difficulties.  It not infrequently happened that the master of the port visited by him had, within the time elapsed since the departure of the vessel from home, fallen into strife with the respective Hanse town whose ensign the vessel bore.  As newspapers and despatches were at that time unknown, it is not difficult to conjecture the difficulties with which a merchant had to contend.  Moreover, he required an exact knowledge of local conditions and of the legal rights accorded him, which were different in each city and always inferior to those of the native inhabitants.  To-day, as a rule, a foreigner, wherever he may be, enjoys the full benefits of the place he happens to visit, equally with the resident citizen.  It was not so in the days of the Hansa, and hence the constant endeavor of the league to obtain firmly established offices or bureaus abroad.  At an early date such a bureau existed in London under the name of the Stahlhof, another at Novgorod under the name of the St. Petershof, and still others at smaller towns in England and the Netherlands—­each having its peculiar privileges, customs, and mercantile usages, but all possessing in common the invaluable right of settling any difficulty affecting the members of the league according to their own native code.  In London the representative of the league was compelled to become an English citizen, and the entire bureau thus became naturalized, as it were.  The same was true of the Hanse bureau at Bruges, a city in which after all, in view of the powerful competition prevailing there, a pronounced monopoly was certain to be curbed to some extent.  Here the league merely possessed warerooms, while their agents lived privately among the burghers.  The right of holding court in the Carmelite monastery was conceded to them; and there, too, they administered their affairs.  In Novgorod, however, the conditions were entirely different.  In view of the uncivilized condition and the national prejudices of the Russians, the greatest care had to be exercised in all intercourse with the natives in order that the existence of the entire Hanseatic colony might not be endangered.  Consequently, this intercourse was regulated with great circumspection and in all detail both by the diet of the Hanseatic League and by the chiefs of the bureau.