PITS AND PEGS. 79 



in thick jungle. It consists in marking out the 

 exact spots where every Coffee bush is to stand on 

 a plot of woodland which has been only slightly 

 cleared, and has been traced out by the trees, on 

 what will eventually be the margin, having been 

 slightly notched, or the leaves and rubbish scraped 

 away. Supposing the space thus enclosed is fifty 

 acres in extent and the bushes are going to stand 

 four and a-half by five feet apart, then there will be 

 1,936 per acre, and some 96,800 in the clearing! 

 The labour of marking each peg off separately can 

 be understood. 



The first thing to be done is to strike a base 

 line right across the ground. To do this, a theo- 

 dolite as previously mentioned, and two men with 

 tall staffs painted red and white, are needed, 

 besides trustworthy coolies, who have hold of the 

 opposite ends of a long fifty-foot rope, divided into 

 six-foot lengths .by tags of tape or coloured rag, as 

 well as numerous attendants with armfuls of pegs 

 to mark the site of the holes to be dug. The 

 Englishman then, starting from the edge of the 

 future belt, directs the two line coolies to hold the 

 rope taut in the direction which the instrument 

 tells him is straight for the opposite side of the 

 marked-out space, and as soon as this is satis- 

 factorily accomplished the coolies stick in pegs 

 directly under each six-foot mark. Then the line 

 is taken forward again to the last peg, and another 

 set measured off. This is all very well when the 



