Author of "Dorymates," "Campmates," "Raftmates," "Canoemates," etc.
CHAPTER XVII.
JALAP COOMBS'S FOURTEEN PAIR OF FEET.
f course, Mr. Coombs, you can't expect us to go back to St. Michaels now," began Phil, as a preliminary to unfolding his scheme for the discomfiture of Simon Goldollar and his unprincipled companion.
"Why not?" demanded the sailor, who had not for a moment expected anything else. "As soon as I found ye I were to bring ye to St. Michaels, and keep ye there till your father comes. Them's orders, and to disobey 'em would be mutiny, nigh as I kin make out."
"That would be all right if you had found us; but you haven't."
"Eh?" queried Jalap Coombs. "I hain't found ye?"
"Certainly not," laughed Phil. "Instead of you finding us, we have found you. If you had struck us at Anvik, it is possible that we might have gone back with you, but as we have found you some four hundred miles from there, we shall certainly do nothing of the kind. You see, to begin with, we are under the greatest of obligations to Captain Hamer, who, by-the-way, is one of the finest men I ever met."
Here Phil told of the terrible experience he and Serge had undergone in Bering Sea, and of their gallant rescue by Gerald Hamer, all of which the absorbed listener now heard for the first time.
"Now," continued the lad, "we have left him just recovering from a dangerous illness, and unfitted to travel for some months. If he can't get word out to the coast before spring he will be a heavy loser. So Serge and I have undertaken to carry and deliver the message for him. Our entire outfit, down to the very clothing we wear, was furnished by him on that condition. It is also our duty to try and defeat the plans of his enemies, who are also our enemies, and now seem to have become yours as well. So you see we are in honor bound to push on with all speed. Besides all this, we certainly ought to be able to reach Sitka long before my father can get away from there, and so save him a long, tedious, and useless journey."
"I'm not so sartain of that," demurred Jalap Coombs. "For ye've been trying to make Sitka long's ever I've knowed ye, which is going on a year now, and hain't come anywhere nigh to it yet. Still, as my old friend Kite Roberson useter say, 'Jalap, my son, allers steer by sarcumstances; for as a gineral thing they'll p'int straighter'n a compass,' and I am free to admit that your present sarcumstances is p'inting pretty direct towards Sitka. But how do ye propose to sarcumvent the villyans what run off with my dogs?"
"Now you are talking straight business," laughed Phil. "As I understand it, the main object of those fellows is to capture the next season's trade of the Yukon Valley, and especially of the diggings at Forty Mile, by taking advance orders at lower rates than the old company has ever before offered. Even then their prices are certain to be exorbitant, and with Gerald Hamer's list I am certain I can underbid them. But that won't be of any use unless we can be first in the field, for after the orders are given and contracts signed those other chaps could laugh at us and our prices. So our only hope is to reach Forty Mile ahead of them."
"Which ye can't do it without wings or steam," objected Jalap Coombs, "seeing they's got two good days' start."
"I wouldn't care if they had six days' start," answered Phil. "I am confident that we could still beat them with just ordinary snow-shoes and sledges and plain every-day North American dogs. They have gone around the great arctic bend of the Yukon, haven't they? And so have a journey of at least seven hundred miles ahead of them before they reach Forty Mile."
"Yes," replied Jalap. "They said as it were the only navigable channel."
"Well, it isn't, for I know of another that is equally good, and two hundred miles or so shorter. You see, there is a big river coming from the southeast and emptying into the Yukon somewhere in this vicinity, called the Tananah."
"That's right," assented the sailor, "for I've already passed its mouth twice about half-way between here and where the St. Michaels is friz in."
"Good enough," said Phil. "Now by following this Tananah for two or three hundred miles, and taking up one of its eastern branches that is called the Gheesah, or some such name, and crossing a divide, we can strike the head-waters of Forty Mile Creek."
"And sail down with the current, run into port under a full press of canvas, and capture the market afore the enemy heaves in sight!" exclaimed Jalap Coombs, enthusiastically, his practical mind quick to note the advantages of Phil's scheme. "But what's to become of me?" he added, anxiously. "Kin ye fit me out with a new pair of feet?"
"Certainly we can," replied Phil, promptly. "We can fit you out with fourteen new pair, and will guarantee that thus provided you will be able to travel as fast as the rest of us."
"Fourteen pair o' feet?" repeated Jalap Coombs, reflectively, "and slow shoes on every pair? Seems to me, son, you must be calkilating to run me under a kind of a santipede rig, which it looks like the strain on the hull would be too great. As for navigating fourteen pair of slow shoes all to once, I don't reckon old Kite hisself could do it. Still, if you think it can be did, why, go ahead and try it on. I'm agreeable, as the cat said after he'd swallowed the cap'n's wife's canary."
So Phil's plan was adopted without a dissenting voice, and from that moment Jalap Coombs said nothing more about a return to St. Michaels.
That very evening, leaving Serge to see what could be done for the sailor-man's lameness, and taking Kurilla with him to act as interpreter, Phil visited several Indian huts. At these he finally succeeded in purchasing enough furs and moose-hide for a huge sleeping-bag, which the several squaws, who, under promise of a liberal recompense in tea, undertook its construction promised should be ready by morning. Phil also bought an immense pair of arctic sleeping-socks, and an extra supply of snow-goggles.
When he told Kurilla of their change of plan, and that they intended going up the Tananah, the latter replied, dubiously: "Me plenty don't know um. Maybe git lose. Yaas."
"Oh, that'll be all right," answered Phil, cheerfully. "You'll plenty know um before we get through with um, and whenever you don't know which way to go, just come and ask me."
When he returned to the house he found Serge boiling with indignation. "Do you know," he cried, "that Mr. Coombs has walked all the way from St. Michaels without pads in his boots, because those other fellows told him his feet would toughen quicker if he didn't use them? The consequence is they are simply raw from blisters, and every step he takes must be like treading on knives."
"It has been tedious at times," admitted Jalap Coombs. "And under the sarcumstances I don't know but what I'd rather have one pair of feet than fourteen, or even half the number."
"Isn't it good to have old Jalap with us once more?" asked Phil of Serge, after they had turned in that night.
"Indeed it is; but do you notice how he has changed?"
"I should say I had. He is like a salt-water fish suddenly dropped into a fresh-water pond. He'll come out all right, though, especially if we can only get his feet into shape again."
That night the mercury fell to 59° below zero, and the next morning even Phil, impatient as he was to proceed, had not the heart to order men or dogs out into that bitter air before sunrise. With that, however, the mercury began slowly to rise, and when it had crept up 19°, or to only 40° below, the young leader declared the weather to be warm enough for anybody. So he ordered the sledges to be got ready, and when the one drawn by his own team came dashing up to the door, he announced that Mr. Coombs's fourteen pair of feet were at his service. He also politely requested the sailor-man to crawl into a big fur-lined bag with which the sledge was provided, and make himself comfortable.
"But, Phil," demurred the other, "I ain't no passenger to be tucked up in a steamer-cheer on deck. I'm shipped for this v'y'ge as one of the crew."
"Very well," replied Phil. "Then of course you will obey orders without a murmur, for I remember hearing you say, when we were aboard the Seamew, that even if a captain were to order his whole crew to knit bedquilts or tidies, they'd be bound to obey to the best of their ability."
"Sartain," admitted the other. "I got that from old Kite Roberson, which bedquilts and tidies were his very words." Then, without further remonstrance, the crippled sailor stepped to the sledge, slid feet first into the big bag, and lay there like an animated mummy, with the hood of his parka drawn close about his face. Its encircling fringe of long wolf hair, added to his preternatural gravity of countenance, gave him such a comical expression that the boys could not help shouting with laughter as Kurilla cracked his great whip and the dogs sprang away with their new burden.
Phil took the lead, as usual, and when they reached the mouth of the Tananah, which, on account of its broad expanse, there was no chance of mistaking, he turned into it without hesitation, and in a few minutes they had taken their last view of the Yukon for many a long day.
At its mouth the Tananah is nearly three miles broad, or as wide as the Yukon itself, and is filled with islands, on which are stranded quantities of uprooted trees of greater size than any seen on the Yukon above that point.
The bitterness of the cold continued unabated, and the sledge party had hardly lost sight of the Yukon ere the young leader heard himself hailed from the rear, and paused to see what was wanted.
"I say, Cap'n Phil," began Jalap Coombs, with chattering teeth, "is it your orders or desire that your men should freeze to death?"
"Certainly not," laughed the lad.
"Then, sir, I has the honor to report that this member of the crew is already froze solid half-way up, with ice making fast through the remainder of his system."
"That is entirely contrary to orders," replied Phil, sternly, "and must be stopped at once. So, sir, put your helm to port, and run for yonder timber."
Half an hour later poor Jalap was being outwardly thawed by a roaring fire of great logs, and inwardly by cupful after cupful of scalding tea, which moved him to remark that, according to his friend Kite Roberson, tea and coffee were the next best things to observations of the sun for determining latitude.
CHAPTER XVIII.
CHRISTMAS ON THE TANANAH.
"Look here," said Phil, referring to the mate's last surprising statement, "wasn't your friend Mr. Robinson in the habit of drawing the long bow?"
"No," replied Jalap Coombs, in surprise at the question; "he couldn't abide 'em."
"Bows, nor yet arrers, since when he were a kid some boys put up a game on him that they called William Tell, which allers did seem to me the foolishest game, seeing that his name warn't William, but Kite, and he warn't expected to tell anything, only just to stand with a pumpkin on his head for them to shoot their bow-arrers at. Waal, the very fust one missed the pumpkin and plunked poor Kite in the stummick, after which he didn't have no use for a long bow nor a short bow, nor yet a bow of any kind."
"I don't blame him," laughed Serge. "But we would very much like to know how he determined latitude by tea and coffee."
"Easy enough," was the reply. "You see, tea is drunk mostly in cold latitoods similar to this, and coffee in warm. The higher the latitood, the hotter and stronger the tea, and the less you hear of coffee. At forty-five or thereabouts they's drunk about alike, while south of that coffee grows blacker and more common, while tea takes a back seat till you get to the line, where it's mighty little used. Then as you go south of that the same thing begins all over again; but there's not many would notice sich things, and fewer as would put 'em to practical use like old Kite done."
"Mr. Coombs," said Phil, "you sound pretty well thawed out, and if that is the case we'll get under way again."
"Ay, ay, sir!" responded the mate, thrashing his long arms vigorously across his chest to restore circulation, and then slipping resignedly into his fur bag. "Anchor's apeak, sir." And away sped the sledges up the broad level of the Tananah.
Every member of the party had by this time become so thoroughly broken in to his duties, that when they made camp that night the promptness with which it was prepared, as well as the ensuing comfort, was a revelation to Jalap Coombs, who declared that there had been nothing like it in the camps of the other party.
"Of course not," said Phil, "for they haven't got Serge Belcofsky along, so how could their comfort equal ours?"
At this Serge, covered with confusion, replied, "Nonsense, Phil! You know it is because we have got such capital campmen as Kurilla and Chitsah with us."
At this the face of the elder Indian beamed with pleasure. He did not exactly understand the conversation; but believing that he ought to make some reply, he pointed to Jalap Coombs, and looking at Phil, remarked:
"You fadder. Yaas."
But the journey up the Tananah was by no means an unbroken record of swift movings from one comfortable camp to another, or of jokes and pleasantries. The days were now at their shortest, so that each could boast only about four hours of sunlight, and even that was frequently obscured by fierce storms, when the howling winds cut like knives, and it required every ounce of Phil Ryder's pluck as well as Serge Belcofsky's dogged determination to keep the little party in motion. The feet of the poor dogs were often so pierced by ice slivers that their tracks were marked with blood. The older and more experienced would bite at these and pull them out. Others would howl with pain, while some would lie down and refuse to work until they were put in boots, which were little bags of deer-hide drawn over their feet and fastened with buckskin thongs.
It was a journey of constant and painful struggle and of dreary monotony, each day being only the same endless succession of ice-bound river, snow-covered hills, and sombre forest. Especially depressing was the night of the 24th of December, when, with an icy wind moaning through the tree-tops of the subarctic forest, and the shivering dogs edging toward the fire for a share of its grateful warmth, Phil and Serge and Jalap Coombs reminded each other that this was Christmas eve. Never before had Phil spent one away from home, nor had the others ever been so utterly removed from the cheering influences of the joyous season. So Phil described what he knew was taking place in far distant New London at that very hour, and Serge told of merry times in quaint old Sitka, while Jalap Coombs recalled many a noble plum duff that had graced Christmas feasts far out at sea, until they all grew homesick, and finally crawled into their sleeping-bags to dream of scenes as remote from those surrounding them as could well be imagined.
As they always selected a camping-place, and prepared for the long night by the last of the scanty daylight or in the middle of the afternoon, so they always resumed their journey by the moonlight or starlight, or even in the darkness of two or three o'clock the next morning. On Christmas morning they started as usual many hours before daylight, and, either owing to the vagueness of all outlines or because his thoughts were far away, the young leader mistook a branch for the main river, and headed for a portion of the mighty wilderness that no white man had ever yet explored.
About noon they passed a forlorn native village of three or four snow-covered huts, the occupants of which gazed at the unaccustomed sight of white travellers in stolid amazement. They had gone nearly a mile beyond this sole evidence of human occupation to be found in many a weary league when Phil suddenly stopped.
"Look here!" he exclaimed, "what do you two say to going back, making a camp near that village, and having some sort of a Christmas after all? It doesn't seem right for white folks to let the day go by without celebrating it somehow."
As the others promptly agreed to this proposition the sledges were faced about, and a few minutes later the music of Musky's jingling bells again attracted the wondering natives from their burrows.
Camp was made on a wooded island opposite the village, and while the others were clearing the snow from a space some fifty feet square, and banking it up on the windward side, Phil took his gun and set forth to hunt for a Christmas dinner. An hour later he returned with four arctic hares and a brace of ptarmigan or Yukon grouse whose winter plumage was as spotless as the snow itself.
He found Serge and Jalap Coombs concocting a huge plum duff, while from the brass kettle a savory steam was already issuing. Kurilla and Chitsah had chopped a hole through four feet of ice and were fishing, while a few natives from the village hovered about the outskirts of the camp watching its strange life with curious interest.
They were very shy, and moved away when Phil approached them, seeing which he called Kurilla and bade him tell them that a present would be given to every man, woman, and child who should visit the camp before sunset.
At first they could not comprehend this startling proposition, but after it had been repeated a few times the youngest of them, a mere boy, uttered a joyous shout and started on a run for the village. A few minutes later its entire population, not more than twenty-five in all, including babes in arms, or rather in the hoods of their mother's parkas, came hurrying over from the mainland filled with eager expectancy.
"KIKMUK."
To every man Phil presented a small piece of tobacco, to every woman a handful of tea, and to every child a biscuit dipped in molasses. With each present he uttered, very distinctly, the word "Christmas." At length one child, though whether it was a boy or a girl he could not make out, for their fur garments were all exactly alike, looked up with a bashful smile and said, "Kikmuk." In a minute all the others had caught the word, and the air rang with shouts of "Kikmuk," mingled with joyous laughter.
Then they all trooped back to the village, shouting "Kikmuk" as they went, and so long as they live the word will be associated in their minds with happiness and good-will. Three of them, a man and two women, afterwards returned, bringing with them a pair of dainty moccasins, a fox-skin, and an intestine filled with melted fat, which they timidly presented to Phil, Serge, and Jalap Coombs respectively. The last-named regarded his gift rather dubiously, but accepted it with a hearty "Kikmuk," and remarked that it would probably be good for his feet, which it afterward proved to be.
These three were invited to dine with Kurilla and Chitsah, an invitation which they accepted, and so became the guests of the Christmas dinner. On their side of the fire the feast consisted largely of the fish the Indians had just caught, to which were added unstinted tea and a liberal supply of the plum duff. On the other side were mock-turtle soup à la can, baked fish, rabbit fricassee, roast grouse, plum duff, hard bread, tea, and cocoa—all of which combined to form what Phil pronounced to be the very best Christmas dinner he had ever eaten, in which sentiment Serge and Jalap Coombs heartily concurred.
Even the dogs were given cause to rejoice that Christmas had at length come to their snowy land by receiving a double ration of dried fish, which put them into such good spirits that they spent the greater part of the night in a rollicking game of romps. On the Indian side of the fire unwonted good cheer so overcame the shyness of the villagers that the man ventured to ask questions regarding the intentions and destination of this sledge party of strangers. When these were stated by Kurilla he remained silent for a minute. Then he delivered a long and animated speech.
As a result of this, and when it was finished, Kurilla left his own side of the fire, and, approaching Phil, said,
"You go Forty Mile?"
"Yes. We all going to Forty Mile, of course."
"No like um Tananah?"
"Certainly I like the Tananah well enough. I shall like it better, though, when we have seen the last of it."
"No can see um now."
"Why not? There it is right out yonder."
"No. Him Kloot-la-ku-ka. Tananah so" (pointing to the way they had come). "You go so way" (pointing upstream); "get lose, mebbe; no fin; plenty bad. Yaas."
So, all on account of keeping Christmas, and trying to bring a little of its joy into the hearts of those children of the wilderness, Phil's mistake was discovered before its consequences became disastrous, and he was once more enabled to place his little party on the right road to Sitka.
[to be continued.]
LIFE-BLOOD OF A GREAT CITY.
HOW NEW YORK GETS ITS WATER.
BY JULIAN RALPH.
AQUEDUCT TUNNEL UNDER THE HARLEM.
The furnishing of water to millions of human beings in a city, and the arrangements for giving it to them as they want it, whether merely by the glassful or in the profusion with which it is used in a brewery, are among the most wonderful achievements of civilization. Imagine the way men live when they break their way into a new country; that is the only manner in which we can measure the convenience of a modern water supply. I have seen the settlers on the Canadian plains walking a quarter of a mile—perhaps half a mile—to the Bow River to fill a bucket with water with which to cook and with which to supply drink to a household. Bathing, as we understand the term, was only to be done by going to the same river and plunging in—daring the few months when the river water was warm. Thus it must have been with the first Hollanders who settled Manhattan Island. In time they dug wells in the ground, and then came that more lavish use of the splendid fluid, attended by such economy as used to lead the Dutch mothers to scold the children with that admonition we still may hear in the country, "Do you think the servant-girl has nothing to do but to carry water up stairs for you to waste it as you do?"
Did the reader ever see a medical or anatomical chart of the human body, showing the arteries and veins that carry the blood from our hearts to every main and every minute part of our bodies? How like a tree it looks, with its main stem or trunk, with its great branches, with its delicate boughs and switches and twigs. Well, a Croton-water chart of the system by which a river is brought to our bedrooms, instead of our having to go to the river with our buckets, would be just such another complicated, marvellous, treelike object, only I really think it would be more astonishing in one sense, because it is so wholly the hard brain-work of man instead of the mysterious divine creation of the Almighty, whose works are so profound that their wonders do not surprise us so much as when man produces something a tenth part or a thousandth part as extraordinary.
MAP OF CROTON AQUEDUCT.
If we could cut away all the earth of the island, leaving the water-mains bare, and if we could tear down all the buildings of the city so as to allow the water-pipes to stand up, bare and naked, just as they now stand up in their covers of brick and plaster, I suppose the sight of that wonderful forest of big and little pipes would be as surprising as anything that any human being ever saw. Just try to fancy Manhattan Island all under a tangle of towering pipes and crisscrossed tubes, and then, while we are about it, just fancy a lot of savages landing here and tampering with those pipes until one of them should touch some cock and turn on the water. What a rain there would be, in big streams and middling streams and tiny little streams, out of millions of fixtures! No shower bath that was ever conceived or heard of would compare with it. And yet—see how small and weak man is, after all—it would not begin to equal an ordinary rain-storm.
Of water mains—or big pipes sunk in the streets to distribute the Croton water from the reservoirs—there are no less than 715 miles, but when the reader thinks how at every twenty-five feet smaller pipes branch out of the mains to carry the water to every floor of every building and sometimes to every office or room, he will see that of smaller pipes there must be tens of thousands of miles, making up that grand tree which is as much the "tree of life" of a great city as the arterial system is the tree of life of each of our bodies. To carry off the water that courses through all these thousands of miles of pipes we have 456 miles of sewers—or much bigger pipes; some of which men can walk through or even paddle a boat in.
One hundred and fifty years ago, when New York was considered rather an ancient town, the people got their water for drinking from the "collect," where the Tombs prison stands, and from the little springs and streams that ran into that pond. A very few had wells, public or private, near their houses. It was not until 1750 that pumps were set up to make the getting of water easier. It will surprise the reader to know that hundreds of these old wells still remain upon the island. Two or three still have pumps affixed to them, and are used for giving drink to horses, but the rest are covered over and, in most cases, their existence is forgotten. It is not possible, even in case of war, when our water supply might be cut off, that we will ever revert to the use of these wells, for they yield a polluted water that is as bad to drink as poison. Just before the Revolutionary War a man named Colles built a little reservoir above the City Hall, but it yielded such bad water that the people who could afford to do so bought water that was hawked in the streets from carts. It was not until 1842, when we had a population of 350,000 souls, that New York got its water systematically and in such plenty that mothers did not scold their children and Mayors did not remonstrate with the people for wasting it.
New York has never been a boastful city. It never has filled the world with the noise of its greatness or the parade of its wonderful achievements. Its Broadway is the longest thoroughfare in Christendom, I believe; its suspension-bridge is only excelled by one bridge of another kind; its actual size and population are second to those of but one city; but such facts one must glean from the encyclopædias and the letters of travellers. The New-Yorkers say nothing about them. Therefore it is but little known that the aqueduct which carries our water to us is the greatest—many times the greatest—tunnel in the whole world. It is more than thirty-three miles in length, and far from being a mere trench, averages a depth of 170 feet below the surface, and is in places 380 feet underground. It is from ten to thirteen feet high, and averages nearly as great a width. Its way is hewn through solid rock in places, and it is everywhere built of brick and granite. It passes under several rivers, and at the Harlem River, the northern boundary of this island, it is in the shape of a siphon upside down, sloping for 1300 feet under the river, and then rising 400 feet straight up through the Manhattan Island bank of the stream. It cost nearly $27,000,000, and it brings, without pumping, by the incline of the tunnel, nearly 100 gallons of water a day for each of the 1,900,000 persons in the city, or about 171,000,000 gallons of water a day for all of us. It is a solid cube of water running at the rate of two miles an hour, eight or ten feet thick, and ten or a dozen feet high.
RESERVOIR IN CENTRAL PARK.
We are in the habit of saying that the water we drink comes from Croton Lake, thirty miles north of the city in Westchester County, but that is only a part of the truth. The fact is, that Croton Lake was made by damming the Croton River when our system was begun in 1835-42. We now take that water, and the water of several other lakes, ponds, and rivers that are in a great valley or depression in the earth called the Croton watershed. We keep stored up and ready for use about 17,000,000,000 gallons of water in the following natural and artificial reservoirs: Croton Lake, Lake Mahopac, Lake Gilead, and Kirk Lake, Middle Branch, East Branch, Bog Brook, and Barrett Pond. Their names sufficiently describe the character of these great goblets of crystal water which nature and man have arranged for the needs of the great city. But these are so insufficient that, although it is believed we could draw 250,000,000 gallons a day even in dry weather, we are going to take into our system three more reservoirs, which will allow us to store 13,000,000,000 gallons more than we can store at present. And as even these will not long supply our growing needs, we are about to build the greatest dam the world ever saw. It is already called the Quaker Bridge dam. It is to be built five miles south of Croton Lake, back of the town of Sing Sing, where the great State-prison is. It will be a great pyramidal-shaped wall of solid masonry 264 feet high, and 1500 feet long, and will cost, the officials think, at least $6,000,000. When it is finished, a magnificent rich farming country will be flooded and turned into one immense glass of water for old Father Knickerbocker (as we call our patron saint) and his children. The water that will bank up against that dam will rise up over many, many farms and houses and barns and villages for a distance of no less than sixteen miles, and the present dam at Croton Lake will be thirty-five feet under the surface of the water. Now we store 17,000,000,000 gallons of water, but then we will have a liquid treasure of 84,600,000,000 gallons.
THE OLD WAY.
We are apt to think about water as free because Nature evidently intended that it should cost no more than fresh air. And so it is free, so long as we are satisfied to use very little, and to go and dip up that very little out of a stream and carry it to our homes. But when we demand the full fruits of modern civilization, when we insist upon the building of huge dams and vast reservoirs and tunnels and pumping-stations, we must buy the water they bring in order to pay for the cost of the convenience. What we pay in New York amounts to about $1.75 a head for every man, woman, and child in the city, or more than $3,000,000 a year. This great tax, called the "water rents," is used to pay the interest on the debt we owe for our aqueduct, to keep the system in repair, and to swell a sinking fund which we have established. The water rents are not paid according to the amount of water each person uses, but for the quantity that passes into each house, office building, factory, brewery, and stable. The house-owners each pay between four dollars and eighteen dollars a year, and the men who use great quantities—such as brewers, makers of mineral water, sugar refiners, and the like—in the course of their business all pay special rates, which seem very large indeed when we read the sums in print.
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