BEACHCOMBING 57 



the vessels which sought to recover her cedar, strewn on 

 the treacherous sands of Ramsay Bay. Some of the logs, 

 however, drifted to our quiet coves, and portions remain 

 sound to this day. One more promising and accessible we 

 beachcombed. It provided planks for a punt, besides 

 various articles of furniture, and gave me some most 

 practical homilies on contentment. Having found and 

 duly salvaged that log, it was necessary to cut it up ; and 

 then I began to be thankful that pit-sawing was not forced 

 upon me as a profession in the days of inexperienced youth. 

 Pit-sawing is deceptive. It has the appearance of being 

 easy, though not genteel, when others are the toilers, and 

 in the red dust, torn by the polished steel teeth from out 

 the heart of the dull log, do you not " inhale the balmy 

 smells of nard and cassia which the musky wings of the 

 zephyrs scatter through the cedared groves of the Hes- 

 perides?" Is not that fragrance sufficient compensation 

 for your toil, with the clean red planks profit over and 

 above legitimate earnings? Yet that long saw tugs at 

 your very heart-strings, and you know that to get a real, 

 not merely sentimental, liking for the craft of the sawyer, 

 you must take to it very young, before the possibilities of 

 other occupations and pastimes have distorted your genius. 

 This worthy lesson comes from the gentle art of Beach- 

 combing. 



Again, a German barque, driven out of its course, found 

 unexpectedly a detached portion of the Great Barrier Reef 

 200 miles away to the south. When the south-easters 

 came, they pounded away so vigorously with the heavy 

 guns of the sea that in a brief space nothing was left of the 

 big ship save some distorted fragments of iron jammed in 

 among the nigger-heads of coral and the crevices of the 

 rocks. A few weeks after, portions of the wreck were de- 

 posited on Dunk Island, and the beach of the mainland for 

 miles was strewn with timber. That wreck was the greatest 

 favour bestowed me in my profession of Beachcomber. 

 Long and heavy pieces of angle-iron came bolted to raft- 

 like sections of the deck ; various kinds of timber proved 



