Bridle path
A mule track ( hem from the medieval Latin salma, Sauma = load, Old High German soum ) is a for carriage or carriages too steep, too long or too rough Altstrasse that previously with the help of packers and pack animals were transported goods. The clearance on Container height was at least 3 meters.
The transported material was fixed with pack-saddles on the animals. A mule train consisted of one or more animals that go behind each other on the mule. A horse load was called a hem and weighed, regional differences, about 120-130 kilograms. Often only the first beast was led by a leader and the other animals ran tethered or free afterwards.
Mule tracks were found mainly in the mountains. Many historic Alpine crossings were designed as a mule tracks and had a network of Saumstationen where the goods were transhipped to other animals. As pack animals donkeys, mules and horses arrived in Europe primarily used.
Most mule tracks are now either expired or have been expanded to full-blown streets. A well-known example of a known for millennia mule track is the Austrian Felbertauernstraße.
History
The transport of goods by pack animals is occupied by rock drawings at Carschenna above Thusis and on the way to Splügenpass, since about 1000 BC and was at this time the only way to transport goods across the Alps. Only in Roman times created with Reschenpass, Maloja Pass, Septimerpass Julier Pass barrow suitable way over the Alps.
After the decline of the trade at the time of the great migration to the Saumwesen established in the Middle Ages, and it appeared more and more instruments on Säumerordnungen on. The Hemmer joined together to form cooperatives, called Porten, together, the convoy got out of the Prince: the so-called Fürleit. The Hemmer developed its own legal system; court appointed you to the Säumwerksgebrauch. The transported goods were stored and handled in Susten.
Accompanied initially the owner of his goods on horseback, established towards the end of the Middle Ages Stracksäumer who delivered the goods directly to the recipient.
Also in the mule trains of the Middle Ages there were freight documents: With the product was always a vehicle letter, called Pollitte, carried.
The heyday of Saumwesens in the 15th and 16th century ended with the advent of the 17th century and the post better and better maintained roads. In the Alps, however, of the mule trains lost its economic importance only to the development of numerous passes to driveways; the Simplon 1806 at Spliigen 1822, Gotthard 1830, and the construction of the Gotthard Railway in 1882 it was completely gone. Chance is still lined, such as for the construction and supply of shelters in the European Alps clubs.
Not least because of government subsidies for the supply of the Alps, alpine huts and refuges in the Alps with helicopters of the mule trains in Europe is now run almost exclusively as a hobby and hobbies.