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