A rope is fastened round them and they are dragged one at a time along a broad pathway down the middle of the frozen moat which is kept perfectly smooth by constant sweeping—reminding one of the "sooping up" at curling—and thet up the bank to the ice-pit which has been prepared beforehand. In some cases where the ice is for special delivery, as to a brewery or other concern that uses specially large quantities of ice, the blocks are loaded on to pushcarts and mule carts.
The ice-pits are about 100 feet long by 50 wide and 20 to 30 feet deep. The blocks of ice are slid down an inclined plane into the pit and arranged tidily side by side at the bottom and built up layer by layer until the pit is full. The ice blocks are then covered over with matting on top of which a thick layer of earth is spread.
The rights of cutting ice in the moat is let out to a contractor, who must first get permission from the Municipal Board of Works, for which no special official charge is made With this permit he goes to the waterworks who control the quantity of water let into the moat and buys from them the right of cutting ice in a certain section for a fee of $300.
The next thing the contractor has to do, is to get the pits ready for storing the ice; they cost about $75 each to construct.
The head ice coolie gets 80 cents and three meals a day. The ice cutters get 60 cents and three meals each a day. The coolies and boys who drag the ice to the pits get 1! cents per block. Mulecarts hold five to six blocks, handcarts only three they do three trips a day and are püid six cents per block.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.