1835. 



ALERSE FORESTS — SIZE OF TREES. 



391 



load. At about sixteen they borrow an axe, and make the 

 boards they afterwards carry. The alerse forests are like mines 

 to the Calbucano ; and nothino- bat old a^e or accident can 

 check him from making boards after he has had one season of 

 good luck. The profitable parts of the forests are now, of 

 course, much farther from the sea than they were, owing to 

 constant thinning. To get a load of twenty boards twice as 

 much labour is therefore required as was necessary for a similar 

 purpose thirty years ago. The largest alerse tree that has been 

 found by any Calbucano during the last forty years, measured 

 thirty feet in girth, at five feet from the ground ; and more than 

 seventy-six feet to the first branches. This famous tree gave 

 eight lengths of boards and half a length. The two largest trees 

 seen by Mr. Douglas, in his excursion for me, measured one 

 twenty-four, and the other twenty-two feet round, at five feet 

 from the ground: but these were dead trees, hollow in the centre. 

 He saw none above ten feet in circumference, that were quite 

 sound. Report, however, says, that in the Cordillera, out of 

 reach of the Calbuco woodsmen, there are enormous trees, from 

 thirty to forty feet in girth, and from eighty to ninety feet in 

 height to the first branches, above which the heads of those 

 giant trees are said to rise some forty or fifty feet. The alerse 

 has short, stout branches, with leaves like those of a pine, in 

 their bluish green colour, but shorter, being only half an inch 

 long, and one-twentieth of an inch wide : on one stem there 

 are four rows of these small leaves, at opposite sides. 



Captain King has fully described the alerse (vol. i, p. 282-3), 

 and the manner of making the boards. I will add a few no- 

 tices of the way in which it is obtained. 



In carrying his load along many miles of bad road from an 

 ' astillerO;,' to the nearest water conveyance, the Calbucano 

 wears a sheep-skin on his shoulders, under a woollen shirt, and 

 taking a stick, with its lower end forked,* he trudges along 



* To steady him across bridges of single trees, thrown over ravines, 

 as well as to assist in supporting the load. Sometimes they climb up or 

 down precipices with their loads, by a fallen tree, notched to receive 

 the feet. 



