While this won't answer your question directly, some of the material at Sophia's web page might be of use for gathering other data about the river Smoke. Her URL is http://www.geocities.com/chybisa/geography/currents.html
I don't know what to tell you about moving a barge up river other than to say that you may want to research river traffic circa early 1800's - as that was almost entirely done by poling or by mule teams pulling on the barge upstream. As for the knight's horse? If you're using mule power to move the barge upstream - you might as well walk the horse unburdened by anything as move it as cargo. One piece of information I've come across is that transporting a horse via motor transport is as draining on the horse as walking for the same period of time as being transported. As Eric pointed out, horses don't really like being ferried - and I'd be willing to wager part of that is that the ground is not "steady" as a four legged beastie might like ;) None the less, it would appear that you need to determine how fast a craft can move based on its motive power. If I recall from my dimly remember days of education, riverboats were poled by means of a team of men on both sides of the boat. A man would push against the pole by walking down the side of the boat, and upon reaching the stern of the boat, lift his pole, walk towards the bow, plant his pole on the bottom, and walk again. This required that there be room to stand at the gunnels (sp?) of the boat and permit the walkers from the stern to get by and get to the bow. It was a never ending task and back breaking labor to boot. If you want to try and google the information, I'd suggest using missisippi and say, 1810 or so as your starting point. But the thing to remember most about mule paths? It requires that the draft of the river barge/boat be sufficiently clear so as to allow the craft to get past sandbars (which form on slow moving rivers) as well as submerged or partially submerged tree trunks and the like. Then of course there is the problem of what happens when plants try to grow in the area between the path and the actual river bed itself. If the river barge system works - I would have to wonder just how much is being shipped via river and how much might be taken via packhorses and the like. Just thoughts on the matter... ;) _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
