Word: caravan
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Salt routes crisscrossed the globe. One of the most traveled led from Morocco south across the Sahara to Timbuktu. Ships bearing salt from Egypt to Greece traversed the Mediterranean and the Aegean. Herodotus describes a caravan route that united the salt oases of the Libyan desert. Venice's glittering wealth was attributable not so much to exotic spices as to commonplace salt, which Venetians exchanged in Constantinople for the spices of Asia. In 1295, when he first returned from Cathay, Marco Polo delighted the Doge with tales of the prodigious value of salt coins bearing the seal...
...still dark when the retinue sets off for a day's campaigning. The heat, brilliant and soaking, comes soon after first light. On the edge of a town, the caravan shudders to a stop. The candidates pile onto the flatbed back of a pickup truck, smear on dabs of melting suntan cream and flip the switch of a cassette player. To the scratchy strains of martial music, they start downhill, making a short tour and ending up under the spreading roots of the giant ceiba trees, planted to provide a parasol of shade over the baking town square...
When the speech is over and the caravan heads out of town, Maldonado and Carpio are moved into the two bulletproof vans, and the volunteers who ride shotgun unsheath their weapons. For the next hour, the campaigners drive watchfully through the narrow roads and mountain passes at twilight until, it seems, the danger is gone. On the way back to the capital, Maldonado and his men are exhausted, caked with the day's dirt. "We go with our language of moderation, peace, everything, trusting justice rather than strength," says the candidate. "I know it's difficult...
...press conference, or rather the non-conference, was vintage Gaddafi. After two days of waiting, anxious revolutionary committeemen herded the press out of our hotels for a breathtaking, Libyan-style drive through the narrow streets of Tripoli. Lights blinking and horns blaring, the wild caravan raced to a walled compound where soldiers wielding submachine guns waved us through a gate flanked by two Russian T-72 tanks. For the fifth time since my arrival I was thoroughly searched. Inside the handsome government offices with beautifully crafted wooden Arabic arches, television crews set up their equipment on priceless rugs. Then...
Bolstered by its first victory, the alliance campaign caravan is moving on to the Liverpool suburb of Crosby, where Shirley Williams will stand in the next by-election later this winter. If Williams can win in another traditionally Tory constituency, the S.D.P. bandwagon may really begin to roll...