although very extensive tracts are annually covered with fresh plantations.  From this it will be seen that, in consequence of the fertility to which it gives occasion, the abundance of wood in the country is not considered by the inhabitants as an inconvenience but the contrary.  Indeed I have heard a native prince complain of a settlement made by some persons of a distant tribe in the inland part of his dominions, whom he should be obliged to expel from thence in order to prevent the waste of his old woods.  This seemed a superfluous act of precaution in an island which strikes the eye as one general, impervious, and inexhaustible forest.

MODE OF CLEARING THE GROUND.

On the approach of the dry monsoon (April and May) or in the course of it, the husbandman makes choice of a spot for his ladang, or plantation of upland rice, for that season, and marks it out.  Here it must be observed that property in land depends upon occupancy, unless where fruit-bearing trees have been planted, and, as there is seldom any determined boundary between the lands of neighbouring villages, such marks are rarely disturbed.  Collecting his family and dependents, he next proceeds to clear the ground.  This is an undertaking of immense labour, and would seem to require herculean force, 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