These Open Months Run From
The Middle Of April To The Middle Of November; But The Busy Period
Is That Of The Last Two Months - The Time, That Is, Which Intervenes
Between The Full Ripening Of The Corn And The Coming Of The Ice.
An elevator is as ugly a monster as has been yet produced.
In
uncouthness of form it outdoes those obsolete old brutes who used
to roam about the semi-aqueous world, and live a most uncomfortable
life with their great hungering stomachs and huge unsatisfied maws.
The elevator itself consists of a big movable trunk - movable as is
that of an elephant, but not pliable, and less graceful even than
an elephant's. This is attached to a huge granary or barn; but in
order to give altitude within the barn for the necessary moving up
and down of this trunk - seeing that it cannot be curled gracefully
to its purposes as the elephant's is curled - there is an awkward
box erected on the roof of the barn, giving some twenty feet of
additional height, up into which the elevator can be thrust. It
will be understood, then, that this big movable trunk, the head of
which, when it is at rest, is thrust up into the box on the roof,
is made to slant down in an oblique direction from the building to
the river; for the elevator is an amphibious institution, and
flourishes only on the banks of navigable waters. When its head is
ensconced within its box, and the beast of prey is thus nearly
hidden within the building, the unsuspicious vessel is brought up
within reach of the creature's trunk, and down it comes, like a
musquito's proboscis, right through the deck, in at the open
aperture of the hole, and so into the very vitals and bowels of the
ship. When there, it goes to work upon its food with a greed and
an avidity that is disgusting to a beholder of any taste or
imagination. And now I must explain the anatomical arrangement by
which the elevator still devours and continues to devour, till the
corn within its reach has all been swallowed, masticated, and
digested. Its long trunk, as seen slanting down from out of the
building across the wharf and into the ship, is a mere wooden pipe;
but this pipe is divided within. It has two departments; and as
the grain-bearing troughs pass up the one on a pliable band, they
pass empty down the other. The system, therefore, is that of an
ordinary dredging machine only that corn and not mud is taken away,
and that the buckets or troughs are hidden from sight. Below,
within the stomach of the poor bark, three or four laborers are at
work, helping to feed the elevator. They shovel the corn up toward
its maw, so that at every swallow he should take in all that he can
hold. Thus the troughs, as they ascend, are kept full, and when
they reach the upper building they empty themselves into a shoot,
over which a porter stands guard, moderating the shoot by a door,
which the weight of his finger can open and close.
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