Final answer:
Gold transport historically was difficult and unsafe due to the threat of theft, challenging environmental conditions in remote, mountainous areas, and the use of mercury in the mining process leading to environmental hazards.
Step-by-step explanation:
The transportation of gold was fraught with difficulties and risks historically, making it both a challenging and unsafe endeavor. The reason behind this was multifaceted. First, because of its high value, transporting gold attracted the attention of thieves and bandits, making it a perilous task. But there were other, less obvious reasons tied to the gold mining process itself. Prospectors, when encountering finely divided gold, would use mercury to form an amalgam, making collection easier. Sadly, this practice eventually led to environmental pollution, with mercury contaminating waterways. Moreover, gold often lay in remote, mountainous areas, meaning that extracting and transporting it involved traversing rugged terrain, facing the potential for landslides, or dealing with tunnels that could flood or collapse. Consequently, historical gold transport combined the threat of human theft with the inherent difficulties of the physical environment, along with the challenges tied to the mining process itself.