In reply to:

So the Indians were lifting
about a third of a horsepower.

wwh, you know math bores me and that I'm entirely too laisez-faire in attitude toward math--but:

What about the 'per second' part of the equation and the Indian? We don't have any information, do we, about how rapidly these Indians hauled those loads up, do we? We know how many loads in a day--but we don't know exactly the amount of time, do we? I mean, we know loads per day, but we don't know exactly how long it took to get one load up, do we?