208 FOREST LIFE AND SPORT IN INDIA 
elephants to the islands of the archipelago, and 
brings back the logs they have dragged to the 
creeks, and he has a sawmill on Chatham Island 
where timber is prepared for the use of the Settle- 
ment and for export beyond the islands. This 
work is on a comparatively small scale, undertaken 
chiefly for the requirements of the Settlement, and 
serving to show what might be done by an organized 
commercial undertaking; it is in addition to the 
forester’s silvicultural duties of experimental planta- 
tions, of improvement fellings, and of protection, and 
the financial results are not by any means final. For 
instance, no serious timber-merchant would employ 
a mail-steamer of a few hundred tons to carry heavy 
logs, a trade for which it is entirely unsuited, and 
no person trading for profit would incur the useless 
cost resulting from the construction of tramways 
without skilled labour; these are examples of the 
makeshifts that are bound to occur in pioneer work 
which is undertaken primarily with a view to utilize 
the forest wealth, and to advertise to the world that it 
is available to those who will undertake its removal. 
On Christmas Day of 1902 we invited a convict to 
tea, in defiance of all regulations to the contrary. 
He was a sturdy North Countryman, one of the two 
Europeans detained on the island, who lived in a hut 
of his own and filled the post of chief engineer to 
the sawmills then managed by the Forest Officer. 
His crime was that he has asserted to the death his 
supremacy in affairs marital; his attitude, that if 
again involved in such an emergency he would deem 
it justifiable to repeat his action. I think he enjoyed 
meeting his compatriots in friendly intercourse for a 
