of a large house 35 feet long by 20 feet wide, built of stout posts, rafters, and ridge-pole, open all round, and neatly thatched with swallow-tail palm-leaves. There was also a similarly-built but smaller house for myself, and a thatched lean-to shed to cook under. The forest all round the camp had been felled to the extent of one-third of an acre. The branches and logs were chopped up and burnt, but the stumps of the largest trees still stood all over the ground.

At the foot of the sloping bank flows the Wakna Creek, about 20 yards wide and a few feet deep. The opposite bank slopes gently upwards from the waterside, thickly covered with forest trees and carpeted with slender ferns. Immediately above the camp the creek forked, but the branches joined again a mile further up, enclosing an island between them. The branch farthest off descended through a series of rapids, under the dense shadow of enormous trees, whose roots obstructed the current and twined among the rocks and boulders. The branch nearest the camp occupied a still and placid channel, winding through banks covered with tall reeds, swallow-tail palms, and heavy trees scattered here and there; but at its mouth, close to the camp, it tumbled through some great brown moss-covered rocks, among the clefts of which it roared unseen, and against which in time of flood it had piled great trunks of dead trees and a vast accumulation of brushwood.

Here was to be our home for a long time, and it was not cheering to see the deserted place overgrown with weeds, and strewed with rotten timber and the decayed fragments of former occupation. However, it was of no use feeling lugubrious, so we strewed the floor with dry leaves, to which we set fire in order to burn out scorpions, centipedes, and ants, and set to to erect new stages and to cover them with sheets of bark for our beds.

The rest of our party arrived next day, and after they had built huts for the married men, and put the place in order, we settled down to the routine of our work.

CHAPTER XII.

Our work-Mahogany-cutting-Pleasures of evening at camp-Mahogany

-Truck-passes-Log-driving.

My own occupation may appear light and attractive, and so it was, and so it might have continued to be but for the weary sameness of every day, and the longing which often possessed me for a change, and to see and hear about the outside world. Day after day I had to wake at daylight, and rouse the sleeping Indians by blowing a shell, or going round and scolding them for sleeping so long. Day after day I had to walk with my whole working gang in Indian file to the upper end of the island, and there embark in a pitpan and pole up to the different parts of the forest, where the mahoganytrees were being felled, cut into lengths, and the logs rolled to the creek and tumbled into it. My business during the day was to walk from one party to another, or jump into a little canoe and pole up to the other gangs and look after them. This was sufficiently unpleasant to spoil the temper and ruffle the serenity of any man. The Indians would skulk, go to sleep, or hide in the shade, and it was with difficulty that they could be kept steadily at their work.

Only such mahogany-trees were cut as grew at a reasonable distance from the creek, and our work was thus extended sometimes to many miles from the camp. Where the stream was too rocky to be navigable, we had to walk long distances to and from the work; but where the stream was passable

we all enjoyed the long distance, for in the morning we were poled up by six or eight men, and in the evening we leisurely drifted down with the current, shooting any game that appeared along the banks.

On arriving at the part of the forest where the works were, the men were dispersed to the various occupations assigned them, and forthwith the woods resounded in all directions with the blows of the axe and the monotonous hiss of the cross-cut saw, interrupted from time to time by the thundering crash of a fallen tree, an event always hailed by those within hearing with cheers and shouts.

The Indians are not powerful nor enduring workmen, yet they ply the axe with great skill. But when they come to the heavy task of rolling the great logs with hand-spikes along the truck - pass to the creek, their strength and endurance are taxed to the utmost, and they cheer their toil with diabolical shouts and yells. In the dreamy stillness of noon, when all nature reposes from the overpowering heat, anyone wandering in the silent woods who came within hearing of these busy sounds would be struck with wonder at the restless activity of white men, whose requirements reach even to this lonely wilderness.

The scene of operation presents a most picturesque bit of landscape. The long vista of the truck-pass admits a blaze of sunlight into the dark forest, and at the end of it is a small cleared space, surrounded by foliage, in the midst of which stand the great black trunks of one or two mahoganytrees, their tops waving in the cool trade wind, while the air below quivers in a sultry calm. Round the huge spurs of the trees is reared a slender stage of poles, and mounted on this, often 20 feet from the ground, two brown figures, naked to the cloth round their waist, ply with measured stroke the glistering axe, from which chips fly in all directions. Through the long hours the blows fall on the tree; already a huge gap is opened in the red wood; now and then a