174 Canadian Forestry Journal. 



be abandoned before the expiration of that jK-riod or renewed for 

 a long time. The lessee gets the right under a deed to eut and 

 take out certain timbers, usually mahogany, cedar and walnut, 

 and any others he may find of value, except ebony. 



Locating the merchantable allowable trees next occupies 

 attention. Nothing under twelve feet circumference, if mahog- 

 any, may be felled. 



The felling operation started, and usually with platforms 

 as the mahogany have large buttress-like roots extending lo to 15 

 feet up the stem, half a day to a day's work may bring a good 

 18 footer of 300 to 400 years' growth to the ground with two 

 Bini axemen hard at it all the time. 



The squaring then takes place so that only the best ma- 

 terial with scarcely any waney edge on it is left. 



Rollers are then laid down from the trees or group of trees 

 gradually extending to the nearest stream, when 70 to 80 natives 

 get a long rope and pull log after log to the water. 



Tedious as it may seem, the ground is too soft for trolley 

 and often on the small areas there is not enough timber to make 

 it worth while to put down a light railway, although wages 

 are not so low as to make manual hauling a very cheap opera- 

 tion (labour gd. a day including food). 



The bush labour is usually reckoned at 3 cents a foot B.M., 

 though of course it varies. This is on an average of a mile from 

 the waterside and with good trees. Add another 3 cents a foot 

 for the rafting, freighting and selling expenses, and roughly 

 the total cost is covered. 



Prices in England have varied enormously, from $2.50 per 

 foot to 2 cents, and sometimes no bids at all, though last year 

 the average was 7.5 cents per foot all round from this part and 

 a little higher from farther up the coast. 



The rafts as they float down the placid rivers, shaded 

 on either side by oil palms, mangroves or wine palms, look 

 very picturesque, especially with httle native huts in the centre. 



The supervisor on the limit then feels his labour has not 

 been in vain, even with his months of lonely living in his bush 

 bungalow, with a canoe or a mail runner as his only connection 

 with his fellow white men. Occasionally he will be visited by 

 the Government forest officers, otherwise only by his firm's 

 superintending representative. 



Black clerks do the lining and only the marking and num- 

 bering of both stump and log is undertaken by the European. 

 Another part of the latter's work is, however, the planting of seed 

 and raising of seedlings to be planted to replace those cut down 

 (under the old rules. 20 seedlings for each tree felled). A group 



