CLEARING AND PLANTING. 61 



tomatoes which they produced (from forwarder plants 

 than ours) was one which excited the emphatic 

 admiration of Lawrie, who confessed he had never 

 seen a crop of tomatoes like it in all his life. But 

 whereas we had staked up our tomatoes, our neigh- 

 bours allowed theirs to spread out and ramble, in the 

 orthodox Canadian way, all over the ground. The 

 consequence was that when rain came many of them 

 cracked, and the edges of the cracks turned black. 

 In the Okanagan Valley outdoor tomatoes are one of 

 the crops that the ranchers rely upon principally for 

 their annual income. 



^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ 



When a newly-arrived settler buys fruit land in 

 British Columbia, there is always a more or less large 

 proportion of it covered with trees and forest growth. 

 This has, of course, to be removed before the rancher 

 can begin his proper work of growing fruit. The 

 successive operations are logging, burning, stump- 

 ing, and grubbing. 



Logging is the operation of cutting down the big 

 trees. The tools required for this are a couple of 

 two-headed axes and a big, two-handled, cross-cut 

 saw. A notch having been made in the side of the 

 tree, about two or two and a half feet from the ground, 

 the saw is got to work, and with two skilled men at 

 the handles the tree will be sawn through in less than 

 ten minutes. Indeed, a couple of men who under- 

 stand their work will cut down (so one such man told 

 me on one occasion) no fewer than seventy trees in 

 a day. At this work the man who told me this 

 and his mate were able to earn at the rate of 

 $3 (12s. 6d.) each per day. It sometimes happens 



