As I took my way into the forest soon after daybreak I felt that sense of exhilaration that accompanies a settled purpose. The building of the house had been a necessary labour, but it had delayed me and hindered the execution of my plans. Now I was to begin the actual building of the canoe, and with the commencement of this work my deliverance seemed to come within measurable distance. The forest is a boat-builder’s paradise. Whatever kind of timber is required, whether large or small, curved or straight, it is to be had for the cutting. The great trees--which did not concern me--tower aloft and spread their crowns of foliage like flat-topped umbrellas, two hundred feet from the ground; and towards the chinks of sky between their giant canopies, multitudes of saplings of all sizes crane up, as smooth, as straight, and as slender as fishing-rods, while lianas or creepers, varying from the thickness of a pack-thread to that of a man’s thigh, hang from tree to tree in great festoons, twining around trunk and branch, and twisting round one another in every conceivable curve and contortion. If a spar or a straight timber is wanted, all that is necessary is to select a sapling of suitable thickness and cut off the length required, while for a curved timber a liana of the requisite size can be selected and the portion cut out that presents the curve required. On the present occasion I contented myself with the cutting of a good bundle of stout straight rods and a quantity of thin liana to serve as cordage, devoting myself especially to a critical examination of the trees viewed in the light of boat-building material, and I was relieved at meeting with no less than three specimens of the Hon-ton tree, any two of which would, on a pinch, have yielded sufficient bark to cover my canoe. My first labour, on returning with my load of poles, was to erect a set of four trestles, forming a rough staging on which to build the canoe and from which to launch it when it was finished; and in order to render the launch more easy I made the “ways” with a slight slope towards the water. The place where the staging was erected was by a small bay at the bottom of the valley in which my house was situated--indeed, the ways were only a dozen yards from the door of the house. Here the ground was somewhat swampy and was evidently submerged during the rainy season, so I felt secure against the attacks of the white ants, which, in a drier situation, might have come up in the night and devoured both staging and canoe.