ni 



AMERICAN FORESTRY 



VOL. 28 



MARCH, 1922 



NO. 339 



LOGGING MAHOGANY IN TROPICAL WEST AFRICA 



By Veeder Bertrand Paine 



rp HERE are many features incident to getting out ma- 

 ' hogany logs in tropical West Africa, and many 

 difficulties to be overcome from the stump to the hold 

 of a cargo steamer enroute to the mills in the United 

 States. 



The title to the trees must first be secured from the 

 native chief, and this alone presents problems to be 

 solved by the 

 white man. 

 For many 

 years the na- 

 tives have 

 shipped 

 squared 

 mahogany 

 timber to the 

 Liverpool 

 market, and 

 trees of the 

 size required to 

 comply with 

 the Colonial 

 Forestry 

 r e g u 1 ations, 

 nine feet in cir- 

 c u m f e rence, 

 are not plenti- 

 ful near to the 

 banks of log- 

 driving 

 streams. 

 Having se- 

 cured a goodly 

 supply of trees, 

 I began the 

 work of or- 

 ganizing log- 

 g i n g opera- 

 t i o n s, on a 

 scale sufficient 



A MAHOGANY LOG HAULING TEAM 



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

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



to furnish five to six million feet to the mills in the 

 United States annually. 



No white man accustomed to logging work was to be 

 found on the coast. Neither cattle nor horses can live 

 there ; there are no factories or shops to supply the requi- 

 site tools; no streams cleared and fit for driving logs; 



no booms in the Ancobra for holding logs in time of 

 freshets; no harbor in which steamers can take cargo, 

 which must be brought alongside in the open sea. It is 

 four weeks by mail to the home office; one month t)y 

 supply steamer from English ports, with countless minor 

 difficulties to meet and new ones continually cropping 

 up, so I may be pardoned for suggesting that this was 



rather a large 

 order. 



Each one of 

 the great car- 

 goes and each 

 individual log 

 in it has a his- 

 t o r y that 

 would, if told, 

 be of interest 

 and full of 

 strange inci- 

 dents and ex- 

 citing adven- 

 tures, but I 

 will present as 

 briefly as I 

 may, the meth- 

 ods by which 

 the logs are 

 gathered i n 

 such quanti- 

 ties, brought 

 to the shipping 

 point and 

 placed on 

 board the 

 chartered 

 steamers. 

 The entire en- 

 terprise aptly 

 has been 

 termed a 

 pioneer proposition and to describe its working develop- 

 ments, we will start at the stump. 



The foundation for a logging operation has already 

 been laid by the ownership of the timber, and with an 

 unlimited supply of the sinews of war always at com- 

 mand, the next important problem to be solved is the 



