The Irish standard., 1901-03-30

some of his statements: While there
is only one line Of railway at the pres
ent time, there is enough timber along
that line to keep u hundred mills busy
for the next fifty years. There is
great amount of mahogany along the
line of the railway from Manila to
Dagupan.'
"Now, he is a most cheerful liar.
The 100 miles of railway in the Phil
ippines from Manila to Dagupan eX
tend northward through a valley about
GO miles wide in which there is very
little timber anywhere within 20 miles
of the railroad. Before the Spanish
American war, the most of this valley
was one vast rice field and had been
for hundreds of years. The valley eX-
tends from Manila bay to the bay OF
Tingazon and midway in the valley
the drainage is so poor that in the wet
season it is vast lake and too
swampy even to grow rice. The most
Of the timber in this valley was cut off
over one or two hundred years ago,
leaving merely stumps Of trees around
the villages and in the out-of-the-way
places, and mahogany is a very scarce
article in the valley. This valley is
bounded on each side by high, mar
row ridge Of mountains on which there
is more or less timber, but it is prac-
tically inaccessible.
ut is true there is large amount
of timber in some portions of the Phil
ippine Islands, but it is not favorably
situated for logging purposes. The
most Of the timber in the valleys Access
sible to the larger streams, have long
since been cleared off and destroyed,
as the land was needed for the cult
walton of rice and sugar cane. The
timber is mostly in the mountains,
where the streams are tortuous noun
tain torrents, full of boulders and hav-
ing many rapids and waterfalls. Logs
cannot be driven down such a stream
IN the mountains in this country, lum-
bermen frequently build sideways of
two-inch plank, down the side of a
mountain, turn the stream into the
sIuiceway and run the logs down in it.
But that would hardly be practicable
in the tropics; the white ants would
eat up the lumber in the sluiceway in
two or three months. True, there are
a few kinds Of wood in the Philippines,
as we'll rs elsewhere in the tropics,
which the white ants will not eat, but
all Of it, which is not very scarce, is
so heavy, hard and dense that it will
not float in water, will break an AK
when they attempt to chop it and spoil
the saws in the s;wmill when they at
tempt to saw it. 1t would be utterly
impracticable to use such wood for
sideways.
sin order to make numbering prac-
teal in the tropics, the standing timber
must be very accessible to streams in
which the logs can be driven. A lum-
herman who is not familiar with con-
ditions in the tropics has no concep-
ton of the difficulties. The trees grow
in a jungle so thick that bird can
scarcely fly through it, and everything
is interviewer together by millions of
creeping vines Of great strength and
many of them are covered with great
thorns. No domestic animal will ever
force it's way into one of these jungles
and man can only get through them
by cutting a tunnel everywhere he
goes, and the tunnel so cut will close
up in two weeks. A railroad superin-
tendent i'll Honduras was once recit-
ing to me the difficulties of railroading
in the lowland tropcs. Said he: THE
life of a railroad tie here is only nine
months; the white ants eat it up in
that time Why said I, do you not
use the kinds of wood that the white
ants do not eat; can you not get them
here all along your right Of way?'
He answered that they could not drive
a spike in most Of that kind of wood,
but that even where the softer kinds
could be had scattered along within
100 yards of the right of way, they
could not get it out Of the jungle with
out going to enormous expense When
you chop a tree off it will not fall be-
cause it is held in the air by the thou
sands Of very strong woody vines that
tie it to all the other trees around it
in the jungle, so you have to chop
down the whole side of the forest to
get one tree and spend great amount
of labor in cutting the log out of the
jungle and cutting way out to the
clearing so as to haul the log out.
elm the last 300 years many have
tried logging and numbering in the
Philippines for export, but all have so
far failed. The concern which came
nearest to making q success of it, was
Ii. G. Brown & Co., Limited of Hong
Kong. 1t had capital Of 100000,
and for a time declared a dividend of
8 per cent per annum, but it failed in
1894 and was wound up. The same
class of Englishmen have made an i'm
lnense success in tropical numbering in
Belize and other parts of Central