roofs. It has also to
be unloaded in a temperature of ninety to one hundred degrees.
Notwithstanding all this, the inhabitants of the most distant tropical
seaports are supplied with ice every day of the year at the moderate
price mentioned above.

It was Frederick Tudor also who originated and developed the best
methods of cutting, packing, storing, and discharging ice, so as to
reduce the waste to the minimum. I am assured by a gentleman engaged in
the business that the blocks of ice now reach Calcutta, after the long
voyage from Boston, with a waste scarcely noticeable. The vessels are
loaded during the cold snaps of January, when water will freeze in the
hold of a vessel, and when the entire ship is penetrated with the
intensest cold. The glittering blocks of ice, two feet thick, at a
temperature below zero, are brought in by railroad from the lakes, and
are placed on board the ships with a rapidity which must be seen to be
appreciated. The blocks are packed in sawdust, which is used very much
as mortar is used in a stone wall. Between the topmost layer of ice and
the deck there is sometimes a layer of closely packed hay, and sometimes
one of barrels of apples. It has occasionally happened that the profit
upon the apples has paid the freight upon the ice, which usually amounts
to about ten thousand dollars, or five dollars a ton.

The arrival of an ice ship at Calcutta is an exhilarating scene. Clouds
of dusky natives come on board to buy the apples, which are in great
request, and bring from ten to thirty cents each, according to the
supply. Happy is the native who has capital enough to buy a whole barrel
of the fruit. Off he trudges with it on his back to the place of sale,
or else puts it on a little cart and peddles the apples about the
streets. In a day or two that portion of the cargo has disappeared, and
then the ice is to be unloaded. It was long before a native could be
induced to handle the crystal blocks. Tradition reports that they ran
away affrighted, thinking the ice was something bewitched and fraught
with danger. But now they come on board in a long line, and each of them
takes a huge block of ice upon his head and conveys it to the adjacent
ice-house, moving with such rapidity that the blocks are exposed to the
air only a few seconds. Once deposited there, the waste almost ceases
again, and the ice which cost in Boston four dollars a ton is worth
fifty dollars.

When Frederick Tudor had been empl