252 REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1887. 



can carry 111 pounds 11 miles in a day. Daily allowance of water for 

 a man, one gallon for all purposes. 



A porter going short distances and returning unloaded carries 135 

 pounds 7 miles a day. He can carry in a wheelbarrow 150 pounds 10 

 miles a day. 



The muscles of the human jaw exert a force of 534 pounds. 



Dr. D*wight observes: "Indians will travel with a facility, a celerity, 

 and a freedom from fatigue unknown to the people of Europe. Their 

 couriers or runners are said to go at the rate of 100 miles a day. Two 

 Choctaws followed my father 500 miles to steal from him two valuable 

 horses. When I asked how they could be willing to take so much trouble 

 for such an object, he observed that they had no other business, and 

 that roving was their favorite enjoyment." * 



The number of pounds that a man is able to lift or carry a short 

 distance hardly enters into this investigation, but rather belongs to 

 feats of strength and agility. A naval officer tells of a Swede who, wish- 

 ing to show his captain how nicely he had polished a brass canuon, took 

 it on his shoulder and carried it upon the bridge. The weight could 

 not have been less than a half ton. The following example of woman's 

 strength, by Captain Healy, involves also the idea of ingenuity and the 

 conquest of natural forces : A woman volunteered to bring in her boat 

 a stone for an anchor to his launch which required two strong men to 

 lift; weight guessed to be 800 pounds [that is too high]. She first filled 

 her boat with small branches of spruce ; then, choosing a part of the 

 bank where her boat-rail would be on a level with the ground, rolled 

 the stone over on the pliant boughs. Afterwards the spruce boughs 

 were removed one by one, to allow the stone to slip to its place in the 

 boat.t [From Capt. Healy's account I infer that she first filled her boat 

 with water and used the buoyancy of the water to help her in moving 

 the stone. He says that they understand this.] 



As to the amount one man can carry, Prof. Asaph Hall, of the United 

 States Naval Observatory, communicates the following : 



" When I was nineteen years old I could carry a barrel of flour from 

 the wagon into the house without putting it down, a distance of 3 rods, 

 and up six stone steps; but I could not do this with a barrel of cider. 

 If we put my carrying strength equal to #, we have therefore, barrel of 

 cider 7x7, barrel of flour. Jt was the custom in Litchfield County, 

 Connecticut, forty years ago, to use 112 pounds for a hundredweight. 

 A common test of strength among the young men was to string ten 

 half hundredweights on the shanks of a fork for a lift. There were many 

 men who could lift 560 pounds." 



THE PROFESSIONAL CARRIER. 



A new epoch in the history of the human beast of burden commences 

 with the appointment of professional bearers or professional common 



* Hodgson's North America, vol. I, p. 250. 



t M. A. Healy, Cruise of the Corwin, 1887, p. 49. 



