24 EDGE OF THE JUNGLE 
clumps needed clearing of old stems, and for two 
days we indulged in the strangest of weedings. 
The dead stems were as hard as stone outside, but 
the ax bit through easily, and they were so light 
that we could easily carry enormous ones, which 
made us feel like giants, though, when I thought 
of them in their true botanical relationship, I 
dwarfed in imagination as quickly as Alice, to a 
pigmy tottering under a blade of grass. It was 
like a Brobdingnagian game of jack-straws, as 
the cutting or prying loose of a single stem often 
brought several others crashing to earth in unex- 
pected places, keeping us running and dodging to 
avoid their terrific impact. The fall of these 
great masts awakened a roaring swish ending in 
a hollow rattling, wholly unlike the crash and 
dull boom of a solid trunk. When we finished 
with each clump, it stood as a perfect giant bou- 
quet, looking, at a distance, like a tuft of green 
feathery plumes, with the bungalow snuggled. 
beneath as a toadstool is overshadowed by ferns. 
Scores of the homes of small folk were uncov- 
ered by our weeding out—wasps, termites, ants, 
bees, wood-roaches, centipedes; and occasionally 
a small snake or great solemn toad came out from 
the débris at the roots, the latter blinking and 
