December 10, 1920 



Hardwood Record — Veneer & Panel Section 



29 



Old Dutch fort at Axim, pnn 

 cipal log shipping point 



MIGHT tell you my own story, the 



story of how I, MAHOGANY, the king 



of the woods, came into being in 



Africa's fevered jungles, and of my 



emotions as through the long hundreds 



of years 1 fed upon the rich black soil 



and grew to royal height, only to be 



brought to earth and transported 



many thousand miles to the 



United States for your purposes. 



But there is perhaps a bigger, 



greater story behind it all than 



the mere relation of my own 



feelings during the process and that is the human story 



of the men who sought me out in my distant home and 

 through tedious toil brought me here to serve you and 

 delight your eye. 



Let the poet rave, as he sits moodily in his secluded 

 study, and say that his is the only calling in which romance 

 holds sway, or let him even assert that the modern world 

 knows not true romance. Would he forget that from and 

 beyond the time when the slave-manned galleys of ancient 

 Rome put out upon the Mediterranean with their divers 

 cargoes until this day there has ever pulsed in the arteries 

 of commerce the true spirit of romance? 

 And if he would but look deep into 

 the heart of me, MAHOGANY, as my 



Native hauling team 



ruddy, polished flanks glow, live and speak in the mellow 

 light from his fireplace, he would know that he had all 

 too hastily termed commerce a dull and sordid thing, 

 that behind most of our taken-for-granted necessities and 

 luxuries of life there lie stories galore of rom.ance, and 

 that my story, the story of KING MAHOGANY, is not 

 the least of these. 



First of all, there were of course the men here at their 

 desks who conceived the project — broad visioned men 

 who recognized no such obstacles as oceans, or thick- 

 matted, fevered jungles in a land which in the old days, 

 prior to the coming of modern sanitation, and a better 

 understanding of tropical medicine, was called "The 

 White Man's Graveyard. 



Then there were the first engineers and lumbermen, 

 with the adventuresome blood of true pioneers coursing 

 through their veins, who set sail for the darkest Africa 

 to plant the ever advancing flag of modern American 

 commerce in the far land. 



With their parties of native porters and laborers they 

 pushed back into the hinterlands, slashing their wearisome 



The Romance 

 of Mahogany 



By ROBERT MOORMAN PARKS 



way through with cutlasses. Protected from the close, 

 deadly rays of the tropic sun by pith helmets and spine 

 pads, they pushed unflaggingly on, over marsh and up- 

 land, burrowing through the dense forests where monkeys 

 chatted incessantly and many strange creatures cried out 

 in the night, where vivid flowers and the pale but mag- 

 nificent orchids cluttered up the way, until their tortuous 

 surveys w^ere completed. 



In solemn conclave with the native tribal kings, swathed 

 in dignity and their regal cloths of Manchester calico, 

 and surrounded by the many black men of the courts — 

 royal stool bearers, secretaries, interpreters, and what 

 not — the concessions were duly granted and the real 

 logging began. 



It so happened that 1 grew on a little knoll, some two 

 miles from the point on the river w^here one of the logging 

 camps was located, which, in turn, was about a hundred 

 miles from the seacoast. So 1 had ample opportunity 

 to w^atch the white men at work. There were only two 

 of them at this particular camp, though occasionally some 

 "big massa" came through from the nearest town, fifty 

 miles away, on his round of inspection, with many porters 

 bearing supplies on 



their heads. 



The two white men 

 lived in a bamboo bun- 

 galow on a hill, and be- 

 low were the thatched- 

 roof huts of the native 

 laborers. There must 

 have been two hundred 

 blacks in the little vil- 

 lage, hastily built in a 

 clearing when the white 

 men first came. There 

 were Africans of many 

 tribes, but mostly Wan- 

 garas, Mohammedan 

 nomads come down 

 from the Sahara desert 

 and the grassy border 

 country, Fantee boys 

 from the seacoast, and 

 the Wassaw boys of the 

 district. 



1 could see them 

 every morning at day- 



Deckload of mahogany, schooner "C. C. 

 Mengel, Jr." 



