410 DOTTINGS ON THE ROADSIDE. [Chap. XXIY.— B. P. 
and two to the nearest watercourse, by means of 
which it is floated to the port of shipment. But 
it is not alone the felling the trees that engages the 
attention of the mahogany cutter; his principal 
business is road-making, for opening a road from 
the timber to the river requires much more labour 
and expenditure than the mere cutting it down. 
The road must be quite cleared of brushwood, the 
rocks and even hillocks removed, the stumps of the 
trees squared off, so that nothing may impede the 
ox-cart, the streams bridged over; in short, a good 
cart-road made. This work commences in December, 
when the dry season has fairly set in, and by the time 
the ground is well dried up—namely, in March—- 
several miles of roads have been made of quite a sub¬ 
stantial character; indeed, these men deserve the 
name of Carib engineers, and better men for employ¬ 
ment on the works of any tropical railway it would be 
difficult to find; very little teaching would be re¬ 
quired to make them perfect. 
When the mahogany is rolled into the river, it is 
allowed to remain there until the water rises, about 
June, when it is floated down in charge of men who 
follow with their pitpans and keep it in the stream. 
One peculiarity of the mahogany is that the wood 
is superior when grown in the open savanna on 
stony ground; but it attains its greatest size in the 
solitude of the forests, and no doubt there are thou¬ 
sands on thousands of trees still to be found in the 
vicinity of the Blewfields river. 
The trees are felled between change and full of the 
