EASTWARD HO! 67 
for the quarter. I am not quite certain about the origin of 
this title, but believe it comes from the wayback, being some 
ancient story of an old Castilian ancestor and “el burro del 
réy.”’ After dinner we found early to bed and early to rise 
was the order of the day, and as we were all tired, turned in, 
an amusing little interlude being caused by the efforts of my 
American friend, 6 ft. in height, weighing 230 lbs., to get into 
a suit of pajamas of our host, 5 ft. 6 in. and 150 Ibs. weight. 
At 4 A. M. the Poo-Poo-Poo of a horn or conch-shell woke us 
up. “Say,” said Kaintuck, “is that the cows coming 
home?” “No,” responded I, “it is the labourers going out.” 
As our host was now bumping about with much splashing of 
water, we judged it was time we did ditto, and at 5.30, after 
some good coffee, we were off for the woods, a distance of 
but three miles right in the heart of the Mora forest (Mora 
excelsa), the great social tree of Trinidad and British Guiana. 
Here and there the eye of the woodsman might discern a 
solitary balata (mimusops globosa), carapa or Crapeaud, 
(carapa guianensis), guatacare (lecythis idatimon), or laurier 
cyp (Oreodaphne cernua), but those forest giants the Mora 
by far eclipsed the others in quantity, size, and grandeur, 
“lifting their shafts like some great amiral,’’ one hundred 
and fifty, aye, and two hundred or more feet from the ground. 
We walked along the road on a carpet of little palms, chiefly 
timite (manicaria) and manacques (euterpe oleracea), and 
through irregular coppices of young Mora with their chestnut- 
like seeds strewn around like shells on the sea-shore, to the 
place where my workmen were busy with pit-saw, cross-cut, 
and axe, squaring and sawing the great chestnut-coloured 
logs. My American friend expressed himself delighted with 
the strong and tough texture of the timber, and opined that 
there would be a lot of money for that wood in the States for 
railway ties. I had to explain to him that unless there was 
a sudden local demand for the different hard-woods for large 
contracts, the game was not worth the candle, the lack of 
water carriage rendering an export trade utterly impossible. 
I also told him that although the Mora wood was so tough 
and heavy, there was a local prejudice against it as posts or 
pillar-trees, the wise men asserting that it always rotted, 
