struck one by his splendid condition.
A wiry man, not thick-set, but well built and athletic, who never turned
a hair. I think he was perhaps too cool to win. His comrades were not
quite so fast as he. They cut the tree with a fairly narrow scarf, the
top cut coming down at a steep angle, and the lower cut coming straight
in to meet it, so that the upper end of the stump, when the tree falls,
is left cut off as straight as a table top. Their first tree crashed in
fourteen minutes, the next in fifteen, and then they all three tackled
the last and toughest, which fell in twenty-one; fifty minutes
altogether when the three times were added.

The next team was Australian. From the first rapid swing one's anxiety
was whether they could possibly stand the pace. They tackled the job so
much more fiercely than the Canadians. I watched a young Tasmanian, his
whole soul in it, brow wrinkled, and sweat pouring from his face. You
would have thought that he was cutting almost wildly, till you noticed
how every cut went home exactly on top of the cut before. These
Australians--they were Western Australians mostly--made a wide scarf,
the top cut coming down at an angle, and the lower cut coming up at a
similar angle to meet it, making a wide open angle between the two. The
odds would, I think, have been taken by most of those who went there as
being in favour of the Canadians; and it was a great surprise when the
three Australian trees were all down in thirty-one minutes and eight
seconds.

The New Zealanders cut third. Their team consisted of Maoris. They did
not seem to be cutting with the fire of the Australians. There was not
the visible energy; their actions struck one as easier, and one doubted
if their great, lithe, brown muscles were carrying them so fast.

Yet the time told the truth. Their three trees were down in twenty-two
minutes and forty seconds, and no one else approached them. One Canadian
team improved the Canadian time to forty-five minutes twenty-two
seconds. The Maoris seemed mostly to cut with a narrower scarf even than
the Canadians, both upper and lower cuts sloping downward at a narrow
angle. In fairness it must be said that the Maoris had practised about
six weeks, the Canadians and Australians about one week.

An Australian won the log-chopping competition; and the Canadians won
with the crosscut saw. A New Zealander won the competition for style.

Later the men were mostly sitting watching the Frenchmen