The teams tossed for trees, and tossed for the order in which they were
to cut. I believe that when some question arose out of this toss, the
Maoris immediately offered to toss again, in order to have no advantage
from the result.

It was interesting to see the difference of style. All three types of
colonial woodsmen cut the tree almost breast high, but the Australian
seemed to be the only one that took advantage of that understroke, with
a hiss through the clenched teeth, which looks so formidable when you
watch our timber-getters. It was a Canadian team which started. They cut
coolly, and the one whom I watched 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