April 10, 1922 



HARDWOOD RECORD 



^Logging Mahogany in Tropical West Africa 



By Veeder Bertrand Paine 



Foreword: The average American comfortably ensconced in ]iis 

 highly civilized liome or office, s-muyly accepts the utility and hcawty 

 of his chair or table or other article of furniture made of African 

 mahogany. This furniture is merely an article, or series of articles, 

 that contribwte to his comfort and percliancc administer to his esthetic 

 taste, if he have one. He talces it for granted, and never dreams of 

 the toil and trouble, the romance and adventure, the white man's cour- 

 age, that lies back of that mahogany furniture. If he could get the 

 story of the begin- 

 nings of that furni- 

 ture from those wlio 

 tdoiu, he icould open 

 his eyes. If pos- 

 sessed of any imag- 

 ination at all, his 

 furniture of mahog- 

 any would talce on a 

 nerv meaning to him. 

 It would connote the 

 mystery and dark- 

 ness of the tropic 

 j « n g I e, with its 

 brooding menace of 

 strange and terrible 

 diseases, its huge 

 slinking reptiles, its 

 ferocious beasts of 

 prey and hardly less 

 ferocious black men. 

 It wovld connote Na- 

 ture in her rankest, 

 most overbearing, 

 threatening and baf- 

 fling aspects. It 

 would connote the 

 indomitable courage, 

 the adventurous will, 

 the intelligence, of 

 the Caucasian, who 

 that he might serve 

 the ends of commerce 

 and the needs and 

 foibles of his kind, 

 dares contend with 

 all these things. 



This is the lesson 

 that one gets from 



the article by Mr. Veeder Bertrand Paine, which is reproduced liere 

 through the courtesy of "American Forestry," in which journal it 

 recently appeared. Mr. Paine is one of- those adventurous spirits 

 who has carried the white man's will round the world and planted his 

 flags in the strangest and most deeply hidden land^. It is because 

 of such men tlmt we stay-at-homes enjoy the use of exotic products like 

 African mahogany, and that the negro of the African jungle learns 

 that the white man is "Lord of Creation." 



It took something more than the mere acquisition of profit to send 

 Mr. Paine dotcn below the bottom of the parched Sahara desert to 

 hunt for mahogany logs in the African jungle. If you showld ask him, 

 he would probably tell you that he went to make a living, tliat his was 

 a job like any other job. And as proof of this, he could cite you to 



tiy courtesy of the Aiiifricari Forestry MttKa^-iti-'. WaatiingtDn, D. C. 



A MAHOGANY LOG HAULING TEAM 



Competition between men of various tribes to get the heavy logs to the water in the quickest time 



frequently is a greater spur to hard labor than wages, abuse or praise 



*Published by courtesy of the American Forestry Magazine, Hush- 

 ington, D. C, in the March number of which the article appeared. 



the business-like method with ti/nc/i he did the job. But whether he 

 knous it or not, it was not the lure of profit b\U the soul of adventure 

 that sent him, to Africa, just as it sent Eric the Ked to ' ' Vinland, ' ' 

 Columbus to the ll'est Indies and Pizarro to Peru and the conquest 

 of the Aztecs. 



In his youth there was a conspiracy on foot to make a lawyer out 

 of Mr. Paine. It succeeded to the extent of giving him a degree from 

 the University of Michigan. But when they had passed the sheepskin 



to him, nicely deco- 

 rated with red seals 

 and ribbons and all 

 that sort of civilized 

 stuff, he decided 

 there was something 

 he wanted to do be- 

 sides bury his nose in 

 the dessicated pages 

 of law books and 

 speak in well-modu- 

 lated tones and strict- 

 ly legal language to 

 judges and juries. 

 He took to the Mich- 

 igan woods and in 

 the 70 's and 80's 

 helped to convert tlie 

 pine timber therein 

 to the needs of civ- 

 ilisation. 



Then along in the 

 90 's when this busi- 

 ness of quitting down 

 pine trees began to 

 grow a bit prosaic, 

 he hiked it to Indian 

 territory and rode 

 the ranges with the 

 cow hands. 



Along about 1903 

 the tramp and bellow 

 of steers had grown 

 commonplace and the 

 lure of timber began 

 to stir in Paine 's 

 breast again. He 

 went down into the 

 timbered area of 

 Southern Mexico and Guatemala to see if there was not some real 

 timber pioneering to be done in those regions. About this time some- 

 body happened to remark to him that the logging of mahogany on the 

 West Coast of Africa was a man-sized job. 



It almost goes without saying that in a short time Mr. Paine was en- 

 gaged in the logging of maliogany in the "Gold Coast" on the harbor- 

 le.'S slwres of the Gulf of Guinea. He kept at this work untU 1915, 

 when war conditions so interfered with labor and shipping that ma- 

 hogany logging operations had to be radically curtailed. He then 

 resigned the active management of the Mengel MaJtogany Logging 

 Company 's operations and returned to the States. 



In a letter to the Editor of Hardwood Kecord Mr. Paine has this to 

 s«;i/ of his work in Africa : 



■ ■ The cruising of tropical jungles, treating with kings and chiefs 

 for concessions and other timber privileges, securing white loggers 



