The Globe editors have marked it with the obolus according to their explanation in the preface: Whenever a lacuna occurs too great to be filled out with any approach to certainty by conjecture, we have marked the passage with an obolus (†).

to ship freight by railroad

If the water, which the doko has chosen for its habitation becomes dried up, it wraps itself in a kind of a capsule of mud […]

Coordinate term: astroturfer