LOADING. CHIEF KINDS OF TIMBER 
107 
to sea, never to return. Some months ago an English 
firm lost in this way, in a single night, timber worth 
something like £1,600 (40,000 francs). But if a tornado 
comes there is no controlling anything. The huge 
trunks in the park plunge about like dolphins be- 
witched, and finally make an elegant jump over the 
boom into the free water beyond. 
* 
ÜC * 
Thus every day that the raft lies in the bay brings a 
risk, and anxiously is the ship awaited which is to take 
the logs away. No sooner has it arrived than the motor 
boats tow raft after raft to its landward side, those that 
are to be shipped having been prepared first by having 
wire ropes run through a line of rings at each end. 
Negroes jump about on the tossing raft, and knock the 
two rings out of the log that is to be shipped next, so 
that it floats free of the raft, and then they slip round it 
the chain with which it is to be hoisted on board. This 
needs a tremendous amount of skill, for if a labourer 
falls into the water from the wet and slippery surface 
of a rolling log he will probably get his legs crushed 
between these two or three-ton masses of wood which 
are continually dashing against one another. 
From the verandah I can watch through my glasses 
some negroes occupied with this work, which is made 
much harder for them by the delightful breeze I am 
enjoying, and I know that if a tornado comes, or even 
a really stiff breeze, the rafts which are lying along the 
ship’s side will certainly be lost. 
The losses in timber, then, between the places where 
it is felled and its successful hoisting on board ship, are 
