The Birmingham age-herald., 1908-06-14
Occident and Orient.

Occident and Orient.
 Perhaps of the whole collection two rictures show the difference between the Occident and the Orient better than any ether. One is of a ship coaling in Japanese port Men and women are working together, some of the women with their babes strapped over the moth- CTS shoulders. The stevedores form an endless chain from the coal bins to the Eold, and along this line passes a sue cession of little baskets, holding about peck of coal. The baskets pass back from hand to hand when empty, and so they work for day on day till the bunk CTS are full. The contrast is of steam crane at New York pier, lifting 50 tons of coal each time it goes over the side of the boat.
 Tt is a prosaic picture, but 1t means lot" said MT. Austin.
 "One sees a lot of queer things in studying the transportation systems of the world" he continued. Here's Chinese boat with the two eyes painted on the brow. I always used to think they painted these on simply from old custom, but when I got there I found they really believed that they enabled the boat to find it's way. l asked ! coolie about it one day and he replied, No can see, how can goY
 Here's a scouting party In the Philip pines mounted on water buffalo. The weter buffalo, costing half the price of q horse, can perform all the labor of the horse. and from his fondness for water is particularly useful in the rice fields. Still one would hardly expect to find nm useful in a scouting party, which we commonly connect in our minds with the idea of speed Here's a street car n Porto Rico drawn by span of oxen, a specimen of rapid transit in the West h. train h limo great load of logs in Alaska, an illus tration of the different methods of trans portation found under the Stars and Stripes Here's a bullock skin ferryboat used by the natives of Northern India.
 "The native carries the dried skin, sew ed in its proper form, on his travels. When he reaches water he initiates the slxin and one sees the remarkable spec tacle apparently of bullock floating on the water with man on top. Land reached he expels the air, folds up the hide, and goes on his way In Egypt one finds the camel, which costs about as much as a horse, and can go two weeks without food or water. His water bucket he carries somewhere In his inter- nal arrangements and he lives on his hump of fat. It is a queer combination to find the camel hitched to late im- proved American reaper in the fields.
 Great Contrast In France.
 In France there are great contrasts. In the southeastern part the peasants herd cattle on marshy lands mounted on sti!ts. Then one can travel over almost the whole of France by remarkably finc system of canals which, connecting with the railroads, furnish an elaborate and valuable system of freight transportation at very low rates. One sees on them long trains of freight barges drawn by motor boats, sometimes run by gasoline engines. and sometimes by overhead electric line systems, like trolley cars. Here's an ice-breaking steamer in use in the Artc waters of Russia which will go through fee 14 feet thick. And here's something which will strike New Yorker as more remarkable than anything else and may take some of the conceit out of him. That is picture of the steamer Sprague on the Ohio river. When taken she was load ed with 70,OO0 tons of coal No steamer ever left the port of New York carrying more than 10000 tons of freight aside from what she needed for her own use so that this unknown Ohio boat Is carrying a load seven times as great as any boat that ever went out of New York harbor."