THE LAND OF THE FREE IN AFRICA 



425 



a bridge would have to be as long 

 as the Brooklyn Bridge. One 

 hundred dollars, due to the ad- 

 verse financial situation caused by 

 the war, represented the total sum 

 available for road-building at that 

 time, and it was decided that this 

 would fall somewhat short of the 

 cost of construction of a second 

 Brooklyn Bridge. 



JUNGLE ROADS BUILT UNDER 

 DIFFICULTIES 



Extending for 15 miles along 

 the Atlantic was a strip of land 

 densely covered with jungle 

 growth and paralleled by a river 

 which degenerated here and 

 there into mangrove swamps. 

 At the end of this river is a town 

 called Paynesville. 



Now, the problem was to get 

 a road to this town by hook or 

 crook, because, once there, a 

 good motor-road could be readily 

 constructed into the interior. 

 Nothing daunted by the appalling 

 lack of funds, the Liberian Gov- 

 ernment decided to make a start 

 at least. Two or three British 

 and Dutch merchants volun- 

 teered to lend a dozen axes and 

 shovels, and a British firm also 

 lent the most important factor — 

 a small American automobile. 



At the time, forty prisoners 

 were idling their time away and 

 eating immense quantities of 

 costly rice. The axes and shovels 

 were placed in their hands and 

 they were told to cut a straight 

 path 21 feet wide through the 

 jungle. Some one made a nice 

 guess as to the direction this 

 path should take, and a fortunate 

 one, because it just skipped the 

 swamp land on the north and a 

 lagoon on the south. 



The only way to tackle the prob- 

 lem was by guesswork, because 

 the jungle was so thick that none 

 could tell, in the absence of skilled 

 engineers, what lay ahead until 

 the great trees and undergrowth 

 were chopped away. Huge boul- 

 ders of rock would come to light, 



Photograph by T. C. Mitchell 



BRIDGE OVER THE ST. PAUL RIVER 



This is another type of bridge constructed by natives 

 in northern Liberia — logs tied together with native ropes 

 and floated on the water's surface. 



