78 COFFEE I ITS CULTIVATION AND PROFIT. 



CHAPTER VII. 



PITS AND PEGS. 



BEFORE the actual destruction of the forest the 

 ground has to be " pegged " and " pitted " i.e., 

 the future position of each plant marked, and a 

 hole dug at the spot, into which the fertile top 

 soil is put and covered over, to save it from the 

 scorching that follows. To delay these opera- 

 tions until the forest is brought down would be to 

 render the first practically impossible, owing to the 

 cumbered state of the ground, and the second 

 purposeless. The first operation here is to provide 

 an ample supply of pegs for marking the sites of 

 the future pits. A man will find pretty constant 

 employment cutting down young saplings of three 

 or four years' growth. These are lopped into two- 

 foot lengths and split lengthways into four or more 

 pegs. A good workman is able to prepare 300 or 

 400 such sticks every day, piling them out of harms- 

 way in the jungle. He will probably know the 

 best woods to choose, but we may recommend 

 keena, malaboddy, doong, or any other tree having 

 long straight fibres. 



/'Pegging" is an extremely tedious operation, 

 and one which the new hand will find very difficult 



