GEOGRAPHY 15 
St. Paul near its mouth with the Mesurado Lagoon at Monrovia. At low tide 
Stockton’s Creek has a depth of merely two or three feet, so that only vessels 
of very light draught can navigate it. 
Monrovia is situated about four miles to the southeast of the mouth of the 
St. Paul River. Its anchorage for ocean steamers, already referred to, is at least 
three-quarters of a mile from the shore. In landing, passengers and goods from 
the steamers must be carried through the surf, which is often high, in boats pro- 
pelled by native oarsmen, into the Mesurado Lagoon beyond the sand bar. 
From here they can be transported in such surf boats or in small steam launches 
along Stockton’s Creek into the main branch of the St. Paul, and up this river 
for a distance of about eighteen miles from the sea to the village of White Plains. 
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No. 2. — Monrovia, the lower portion of the city from the Lagoon 
Just above White Plains are encountered the first rapids on ascending the river 
from the ocean. These rapids occur for some hundred miles up the river, which, 
in stretches, is then again navigable for canoes. 
It is just above White Plains, some seventeen miles from the coast, that the 
hospital of the Lutheran Mission has been constructed. The only hospital in 
the hinterland of Liberia is that of the Holy Cross Mission, situated near Kenima 
at Masambolahun, about fifteen miles from the northwestern border of Libe- 
ria and thirty-eight miles from the head of the Sierra Leone Railway at Pen- 
dembu.' 
What may be called the residential section of Monrovia is the top of the 
plateau of Cape Mesurado, the highest point of which is about three hundred 
feet above sea level. At the extremity of this narrow plateau or ridge is a pre- 
cipitous cliff, at the base of which the ocean surf beats. On the highest point of 
1 These distances are computed from the Map of the War College, Division General Staff, Wash- 
ington, 1916. 
