1827.] Terra Incognita. 595 



and the fire has consumed it. It was our evening amusement afterwards, 

 when we went to the farm at holiday time, to make fires at the roots of 

 the stateliest trees, and with hatchets to wound their trunks, that our auxi- 

 liary might the better worm its way ; and great was our joy when a 

 croaking noise gave warning that our exertions were about to be rewarded, 

 and loud were our huzzas when a tree fell, which it would with a thun- 

 dering crash that might be heard for miles. 



There is an art in felling timber when the intent is to destroy as much 

 as possible greater, perhaps, than when the intention is to throw a tree 

 down without injuring it or any other. A skilful feller singles out the 

 largest and heaviest tree to assist him in his operations ; he notices the 

 inclination it may have to fall one way rather than another, but if it be 

 not more than half its diameter out of the perpendicular, he can make it 

 fall which way he pleases, and so exactly, that he will take a number of 

 others in a line with it, and cutting them half through on the side from 

 the master tree, he at length cuts that one somewhat more than half-way 

 through on the side he wishes it to fall, and then with a small notch on 

 the back it falls headlong, and strikes down in its course those which 

 have been prepared, and at which it has been directed. As the only 

 object is to get the trees off the ground, and as cutting low would mate- 

 rially add to the labour of felling, without any benefit resulting, they are 

 cut at about four feet from the surface, or breast high, so that the stumps 

 remain for years after the ground has been converted into corn-fields, gar- 

 dens, and orchards, and are only removed in the event of the proprietor 

 becoming rich enough (the stumps still remain on my father's farms) and 

 particular enough, to have them burnt out. When the trees have been 

 felled, they are cross-cut into convenient lengths, and the logs are rolled 

 together in heaps and ignited. Such bonfires never were made at the 

 burning of heretics, or for the commemoration of a victory, as I have seen 

 in the wilds of Australia. I can hardly imagine what must be the sensa- 

 tions of a stranger, travelling there for the first time by night, and coming 

 suddenly upon an opening of two or three hundred acres, in the forest by 

 which his road has been flanked, covered with hills of fire not flame ; for 

 the wood being green does not blaze, but consumes wiih a white heat. A 

 lurid glare falls on 'every thing around him ; and if it be summer, the heat 

 of the air is increased almost to suffocation. The rustling of the long 

 grass that he hears is not occasioned by wind, but by the lizards and 

 guanas, rushing from the ruin of their homes. It is not an endless black 

 cord drawn across the path that he sees, but deadly serpents, hurrying from 

 the nests that are made too hot for them. The fish feel the heat in the 

 neighbouring creek but the plashing is not made by them ; the retreating 

 shoals of reptiles take to the water, and go hissing through it like so many 

 salamanders. These things came to me in detail, and not in the gross : I 

 had been a party to minor exhibitions of the kind, before I had occasion to 

 travel much by night in the new parts of the country. 



I remember an industrious fellow, a government servant to Mr. H , 

 who kept three or four different operations going at the same time. His 

 duty was to break up with the hoe a certain quantity of new ground every 

 day ; but he contrived, while he was doing that, to fell, cut up, and burn 

 off timber, for which he was paid by the acre : his government work he 

 could do, perhaps, in seven or eight hours but, by stopping every half 

 hour, and tending the fires he had at work, felling, &c., in twelve hours he 

 could do his exacted task, and earn the wages of a free man besides. By 



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