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Newly Deceased
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Gilthalion here...
What a collection of speculation and scholarship! (Far be it from me to say which is which! <img src=wink.gif ALT="
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I lack the resources of many of you, but I have two cents I'd like to pitch into the abyss.
Even if the Dwarves lined the shafts with mithril, it would not catch enough sunshine to grow enough food to support the entire population of Moria. A reflective surface to the shafts would be needed to maximize sunlight, moonlight, etc. Regular silver might do, but anything except mithril would likely tarnish. Still, wealthy dwarves may do much. Failing this sort of engineering, the shafts would only give the direct sunlight needed for vegetative growth when the sun shone directly through them. This might happen a couple of hours a couple of days of the year. While reflective inner surfaces would be an expensive improvement (that they may have had, before stipped away by greedy orcs!), it would still not provide the necessary illumination for gardening on this scale.
As for fungal growth, indirect light is still needed. Mushrooms actually do NOT grow in absolute darkness. They also do not provide all of the nutrition needed. (Unless Aule crafted them with different nutritional needs. They certainly seemed to relish everything in Bilbo's pantry!)
As someone mentioned, even mushrooms require a growth medium (rotten logs for instance). This would still necessitate massive deliveries of materials.
What was the population of Moria?
For the sake of this exercise, let's assume 100,000.
Each healthy Dwarf (excluding the inevitable Bombur) would need a good 2,500 calories or so.
Let's also say this is a generous 4 lbs of food stuffs. (We'll leave water aside.) Let's also say that each Dwarf required something like 4 pints of beer/wine/mead/ale each day.
That is a total of about 8 lbs of food and drink at, say, 1/2 cubic foot of volume.
That means that 800,000 lbs, or 400 tons of food delivered each day for every 100,000 dwarves. (One assumes a buffering inventory is kept and rotated on a first-in-first-out basis.) This would occupy a volume of about 50,000 cubic feet. It could be piled in a space 10' high by 30' wide by 166 2/3' long. Thirty such rooms would provide food and drink for a month without rationing.
Let us assume a standard cargo container (wagon load) of 5' wide by 10' long by 2' deep. That is 100 cubic feet for each 1600 pound cargo. (One could easily double that, but let's not strain the capacity of the dwarvish wagons.)
That is 500 wagonloads daily.
Assume that shipments are normally received 24/7.
If only one wagon could be carted across at a time, then a wagonload of goods would have to cross the abyss every 2 minutes 52.8 seconds. (If my math is correct! Double the volume of each wagonload and you can make that 250 wagons at 5 minute 45.6 second intervals.)
If there are more or less dwarves, the calculation's change.
It might have happened something like this...
Gar drove his cart along slowly, in line with the others. This was his second and final shipment of the day, when delivered, he looked forward to heading to the hall with the rest of the crew for some of the very beer he had been hauling.
Slowly, but at a steady clip, each wagon disappeared into the great eastern entranceway of Moria. The great wheels of the wagon had a large diameter which made the job of the horses difficult, but not impossible, as each sturdy team pulled a ton of wagon, dwarf, and cargo up the broad flat steps of the entrance.
Once inside, his dwarven eyes quickly adjusted to the cool darkness. There were only five wagons ahead of him, then he could turn the cart over to the night driver, who would change the horses and take over until Gar resumed his route the next morning.
Less than a quarter of an hour passed and his cart was at the abyss. If the Bridge of Khazadum had been wider, he could have driven the wagon across.
Back in his grandfather's day (as his grandfather never wearied of telling him) a team of dwarves were on hand to offload each wagon, quick as a wink, and pass the goods along hand to hand across the bridge. A steady stream of goods was thus moved by hand as fast as could be. Occasionally, a hand would slip, and the goods would fall, never to be recovered. The dwarves who dropped the goods would find the cost docked from their pay.
This was the lot of the least skilled dwarves, and every young dwarf also had to take a turn each day during the apprenticeship.
Old Nar thought that system best, and safest.
Gar preferred the new system. There were still work crews on either side of the abyss, but now, goods were borne across far more quickly, with little loss.
He pulled his wagon up to the edge of the abyss. Like clockwork, the dwarves across the way had finished offloading the last cart and had swung the platform across for his. It clicked into place. He backed his cart onto the platform, unhitched his team with a pull of the strong pin that held the harness to the cart, and the ferry crew swung the platform and cart across so that it locked into place on the other side. The cart was pulled off and unloaded. The previous cart was pushed onto the platform and sent back across.
Suddenly, horns rang out!
Orcs were approaching in force up the Dimrill Dale!
Gar grabbed his axe and ran to the great entrance way.
Behind him, other dwarves were running to their posts, crossing by both bridge and the dizzying ride across the swinging ferry.
Then, when all were in place, a call sounded and with a great rattling sound, the chains that held the ferry platform from high above were released and it went crashing into the bottomless chasm.
Moria would be safe. Gar gripped his axe and waited to greet any attackers who made it past the arrows of the Dwarves...
If you can bring in more than one cart at a time, and have more than one platform, this becomes even easier. Go to the shipyard of any port city (during any period of history!) and you'll see this sort of thing going on. Harder work in ancient or even medieval or early modern times, but it's nothing new to us, and I'm sure the Dwarves could cope.
I realize that the Dwarves might well have made use of the surrounding Men to handle cartage (not to mention care of the horses or oxen or mules), preferring to contract out such work, but the principles would remain the same.
P.S. For any who are interested, check out my recording of
THE BRIDGE OF KHAZADUM in RealAudio at
http://www.geocities.com/robertwgard...ilthalion.htmlGilthalion's Grand Adventures</a>
<hr> <center><font size=1>Not much at all to see at
http://www.geocities.com/robertwgardner2000My Bare Bones Website</a></center></p>