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You are looking from the pier up the towering side of one of the great ocean-liners plying between here and San Francisco, a journey of 4,800 miles taking from fourteen to eighteen days.  This is the way the coaling for the voyage is accomplished.  Those lighters that you see drawn up alongside the Siberia have brought supplies from a great colliery and these women and girls are loading up the vessel ready for her start at the appointed hour.  Certain ones keep certain places on those ladders, while others down here in the lighters fill the coal baskets. The full baskets are passed from hand to hand up the ladders and into the bins, the emptied baskets are returned by another set of girls, and so a steady upward stream of coal is kept flowing into the bins like water from an old-fashioned chain-pump.

The rate at which the girls work at their dusty task is something astonishing.  It is on record that they once put 1,210 tons on board an ocean-liner in three hours and a quarter — that is at the rate of 372 tons per hour!

The towels the women wear over their heads are a valuable protection against some part of the dirt and dust of their trade, but they are not peculiar to this line of work.  All Japanese peasant women wear such towels as head-coverings when engaged in out-of-door work.

You can see in the distance just a glimpse of the lofty hills surrounding the harbor.  You remember this is one of the best fortified harbors in Japan.  Her war vessels come in here for coal, as well as peaceful merchant men, and the coaling of Japan's armored vessels means a serious business.  Some of the finest war-ships now afloat are coaled here at Nagasaki.  If you refer to a map of the Mikado's empire you see that this haven is only about two hundred miles from the Korean port of Fusan.

From Notes of Travel, No. 8, copyright, 1904, by Underwood & Underwood.
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Coaling an Ocean Steamship at Nagasaki, Japan.
Approvisionnement de Charbon d'un Navire Long-Courrier à Nagasaki, Japon.
Ein Ozeandampfer mird in Nagasaki, Japan, mit Kohlen versehen.
Proveyendo de Carbón á un Vapor Oceánico en Nagasaki, Japón.
En Oceanångare lastande kol vid Nagasaki, Japan.
Запасъ углемъ океанскаго парохода въ НагасакахЪ, Японія.

Transcription Notes:
Please check German and Russian lines.