Ore-boat Unloaders 



343 



state of exhaustion and the men in a state 

 of frenzy. The ceremony closed with 

 repeated volleys from firearms, to an- 

 nounce to the spirits on the other side 

 the coming- of the departed. Upon the 

 grave was left a brass kettle, some of 

 the wearing apparel of the deceased, and 

 some articles of food. 



"To discover the witch the suspected 

 party was forced to swallow poison made 

 from the sassy-wood bark. According 

 to the theory, the guilty cannot live with 

 a dose of this concoction, but tipon the 

 innocent it will have no effect. Many in- 

 nocent persons have been the victims 

 of this superstition, until recentl)^ an an- 

 tidote has been discovered, which the 

 suspects carry concealed. 



"Continual tribal wars in the interior 

 have resulted in the depopulation of 

 whole sections and in the extermination 

 of thousands of families. The natives 

 are always fighting, with the result that 

 gold, ivory, and cattle, which formerly 

 came to the markets of ]Monrovia, have 

 been diverted into other directions be- 



cause of better protection to life and 

 property. ■*■ 



"Women are invariably the cause of 

 every contention. Wealth among the 

 aborigines is based solely on the number 

 of wives, boys, and cattle possessed. The 

 man who has the most wives can easily 

 be king. The abduction of one of the 

 wives of a Pessy man and the refusal to 

 give her up when demand is made is 

 casus belli. The men of a captured town 

 are frequently put to death in the most 

 cruel manner, while the women and chil- 

 dren are reduced to abject bondage. Of 

 these the king takes the lion's share and 

 distributes the remainder among his fol- 

 lowers. The children are frequently sold, 

 pawned, or given to satisfy financial de- 

 mands, very often among themselves, or 

 to members of neighboring tribes, or 

 sometimes to Liberians, who pay the price 

 for them, and then keep them under the 

 apprentice system until they reach matur- 

 ity, when they are given their liberty, 

 if they do not abscond in the mean- 

 time." 



ORE-BOAT UNLOADERS 



IN ore transportation the cost of the 

 boat-loading and unloading is a large 

 part of the expense. The surface mining 

 with steam shovels, the gravity-car sys- 

 tem to the ore docks, combined with the 

 automatic ore chutes for boat-loading, 

 enables many of the ore operators in the 

 Upper Lake regions to place the ore in 

 the boat very quickly and at a small cost. 

 The largest boat may now be easily 

 loaded in one or two hours with a cargo 

 of 5,000 to 6,000 tons and with the em- 

 ployment of practically no hand labor. 



The expansion of the ore market has 

 developed special ore-boats, of which the 

 Augustus B. JJ'olz'i'in is a good type. 

 The length of 560 feet, a tonnage of 

 8,000, and an average speed of over 

 twelve miles per hour were extraordinary 

 features for inland boats a few years ago, 

 but now the members of this class are 

 numerous and the cheapest to operate. 



The season tonnage for each boat of the 

 500-foot class is enormous. In 1906 the 

 W. B. Corey moved 302,547 tons of ore 

 in 30 trips ; this is more than a whole fleet 

 would carry 20 years ago. With boats 

 of such an enormous cargo, the time con- 

 sumed in unloading is valuable, and the 

 problem of how to quickly and cheaply 

 discharge the heavy and bulky cargo has 

 received much attention from engineers 

 and ore-handling companies. 



In the early days of ore shipping it 

 would have required 50 men working 

 with hand-filled buckets nearly 23 hours 

 to unload a cargo of the Augustus B. 

 Wolvrin, but at the present time such 

 a cargo is removed from the hold and 

 placed on the cars or in the stock piles 

 in four or five hours. The saving in 

 expense and time during a season for 

 some 80 boats, which is the present num- 

 ber of the ore fleet, is no small amount. 

 The great unloaders have gradually 



