but it is effected by skill
and perseverance. The work divides itself into two parts. The first
(called tebbas, menebbas) consists in cutting down the brushwood and rank
vegetables, which are suffered to dry during an interval of a fortnight,
or more or less, according to the fairness of the weather, before they
proceed to the second operation (called tebbang, menebbang) of felling
the large trees. Their tools, the prang and billiong (the former
resembling a bill-hook, and the latter an imperfect adze) are seemingly
inadequate to the task, and the saw is unknown in the country. Being
regardless of the timber they do not fell the tree near the ground, where
the stem is thick, but erect a stage and begin to hew, or chop rather, at
the height of ten or twelve, to twenty or thirty feet, where the
dimensions are smaller (and sometimes much higher, taking off little more
than the head) until it is sufficiently weakened to admit of their
pulling it down with rattans made fast to the branches instead of ropes.*
And thus by slow degrees the whole is laid low.

(*Footnote. A similar mode of felling is described in the Maison rustique
de Cayenne.)

In some places however a more summary process is attempted. It may be
conceived that in the woods the cutting down trees singly is a matter of
much difficulty on account of the twining plants which spread from one to
the other and connect them strongly together. To surmount this it is not
an uncommon practice to cut a number of trees half through, on the same
side, and then fix upon one of great bulk at the extremity of the space
marked out, which they cut nearly through, and, having disengaged it from
these lianas (as they are termed in the western world) determine its fall
in such a direction as may produce the effect of its bearing down by its
prodigious weight all those trees which had been previously weakened for
the purpose. By this much time and labour are saved, and, the object
being to destroy and not to save the timber, the rending or otherwise
spoiling the stems is of no moment. I could never behold this devastation
without a strong sentiment of regret. Perhaps the prejudices of a
classical education taught me to respect those aged trees as the
habitation or material frame of an order of sylvan deities, who were now
deprived of existence by the sacrilegious hand of a rude,
undistinguishing savage. But without having recourse to superstition it
is not difficult to account fo