Willie had noticed long lines of huge placards, running lengthwise of the pier, and high overhead, bearing the letters of the alphabet. Now he saw what these letters were for. Near the foot of the baggage chute stood a man in charge of the baggage handlers. As each piece of baggage came down to the pier, this man looked at the label pasted on it, and called out S or P or T or whatever letter the label bore. The truckman who wheeled away the piece of baggage took it directly to that section of the pier under the corresponding letter. The baggage was marked in conformity with the owner’s name. Thus, if a man’s name was Jones, his baggage would bear a label marked J, and go to the section under the letter J, and thither Jones would follow and wait until a customs inspector came to examine his baggage, to see that the custom laws were not violated. If the inspector found the baggage all right, he pasted another label on it, and the owner was free to remove the piece of baggage so passed. But if the inspector was not satisfied about any piece of baggage, he could order it removed for further search or for seizure. It was indeed a picturesque sight to see the inspectors going through piece after piece of baggage, while the excited owners gesticulated and tried to explain about this or that, in broken English, or volubly explained in explosive speech to an interpreter. Yet interesting as these things were, they were not what Willie had come to see. Under different circumstances, he might have lost himself completely in contemplation of this interesting spectacle. But now he had small taste for it. The more prosaic boxes of freight were what interested Willie now. The minute the luggage of passengers was out of the way, the freight holds were opened and articles of commerce began to shoot from the vessel to the pier. It was not such a simple matter to keep track of merchandise. It had not been stamped, in advance, with letters corresponding with the owners’ names. Nor was it spread out over a great part of the pier. Instead, the stevedores hustled it away on their trucks and stacked it in great piles, along the centre of the pier. Each piece of baggage was stamped with the consignee’s name, to be sure, but it was not always easy to find these marks, until Mr. Easterly directed the stevedores to put the boxes on their trucks, with the addresses up. Even then smaller packages were sometimes piled two or three deep on the little hand trucks. Mr. Easterly, however, was skilled at the sort of work he was now doing, and he readily kept tab on each piece of freight. Although Willie could not decipher the labels so readily as his companion, he was nevertheless of use in the search. He was examining the packages rather than the addresses. Specifically, he was looking for wheat. He knew it would be in bags and he was looking for sacks about like those he was accustomed to see American farmers deliver at the mills, with two bushels of wheat in them.