OFFICIAL LANDING 13 



your tree and sawn off a block of the required length, you 

 have only to split off the slab. Ah ! but suppose the 

 timber does not split freely, and your heavy maul does ; 

 and the wedges instead of entering have the habit of 

 bouncing out as if they were fitted with internal springs, 

 and your maul wants renewal several times, until you find 

 that the timber prescribed is of no account for such tools ; 

 and at best your slabs run off to nothing at half length, and 

 several trees have to be cut down before you get a single 

 decent slab, and everybody is peevish with weariness and 

 disappointment, the rudest house in the bush will be a long 

 time in the building. " Experience is a hard mistress, yet 

 she teacheth as none other." We came to be more indebted 

 to the hard mistress — she gave us blistering palms and 

 aching muscles — than to all the directions and prescriptions 

 of men who claim to have climbed to the top of the tree in 

 the profession of the " bush." A " bush " carpenter is a very 

 admirable person, when he is not also a bush lawyer. 

 Mere amateurs would be wise if they held their enthusiasm 

 in check when they read the recipe — pat as the recipe for 

 the making of a rice-pudding — for the construction of even 

 a bark hut. It is so very easy to write it all down ; but if 

 you have had no actual experience in bark-cutting, and 

 your trees are not in the right condition, you will put your 

 elation to a shockingly severe test, harden the epidermis ot 

 your hands, and the whole of your heart, and go to bed 

 many nights sadly ere you get one decent sheet for your 

 roof. 



We do not all belong to the ancient and honourable 

 family of the Swiss Robinsons, who performed a series of 

 unassuming miracles on their island. There was no 

 practical dispensation of providential favours on our behalf. 

 Trees that had the reputation of providing splendid splitting 

 timber defiantly slandered themselves, and others that 

 should have almost flayed themselves at the first tap of 

 the tomahawk had not the slightest regard for the reputa- 

 tion vouched for in serious publications. 



But why "burden our remembrance with a heaviness 



