142 REPORT OF THE HARVARD AFRICAN EXPEDITION 
different village or section is under the direction of a local head man, who of 
course is under the orders of a head man for the entire column. 
It was necessary of course to change interpreters in the different villages. 
Although we had in our personnel and among our servants from the coast men 
who could speak English and several dialects, no one of them could speak or 
understand all the languages of the different tribes. 
Our porters were paid never less than a shilling a man per day and we often 
fed them in addition. In some instances of prolonged marches they were paid 
two or two and a half shillings per man per day. 
Owing to the difficulty of finding enough men to work as porters in some 
parts of the country, the Expedition frequently travelled in relays. 
Base camps or stations were established at different villages in the interior, 
and field laboratories arranged. From these centers the surrounding country 
was explored in different directions by smaller groups whose expeditions would 
sometimes keep them away for several days. 
The majority of the trails in Liberia are not especially difficult for travel 
on foot, and a number of them are as wide as roads. However, the trails lead 
through many low marshes or swamps, where there are a great many streams 
and some larger rivers that have to be crossed. There are rustic bridges crossing 
a few of the streams which are made often of the rattan palm and which are 
sometimes of the hammock type suspended by lianas. A bridge of this sort, 
somewhat unusual in structure, is shown in No. 440. However, there are 
no bridges across the great majority of the smaller streams that one has to 
cross every day. Many of them are crossed by monkey bridges, that is, the 
trunk of a slender tree, usually five or six inches wide, laid across the stream 
from bank to bank. When, as often happens, the streams are from twenty to 
forty feet wide, there is sometimes a series of such slender trunks laid across on 
which one must balance one’s self with a pole more or less as if walking a tight 
rope. Occasionally a trunk of a giant tree several feet in diameter is laid across 
a stream. Almost every day more or less wading in water has to be done. One 
cannot travel in any direction in the interior without having to wade in water 
or through marshes. Liberia is unique in this respect. Sometimes one only 
wades up to one’s ankles or knees, occasionally up to one’s waist, and once in 
a while up to one’s shoulders. In a few instances where narrow deep streams 
had to be crossed, it was necessary to climb up the trunks of trees for from 
thirty to:forty feet, walk out on the overhanging branches, and drop from 
the slender tips to the bank on the other side of the stream. Although such 
a method of crossing streams is obviously not difficult for monkeys, or for 
natives accustomed to the practice, it is difficult for white people even in ex- 
cellent physical condition. Moreover, a man with a fractured leg from a fall 
would have been difficult to transport in the forest where even carrying loads on 
the head is sometimes troublesome on account of the density of the bush. 
The larger rivers on which there were no canoes were crossed on rafts made 
of the timber of trees hewn from the forest, tied together and interlaced with 
lianas. A rope made of lianas would be tied to a stout tree on a bank, and a 
