The superintendent of the men, after receiving the instructions of
Joam Garral, had first cleared the ground of the creepers, brushwood,
weeds, and arborescent plants which obstructed it. Before taking to
the saw and the ax they had armed themselves with a felling-sword,
that indispensable tool of every one who desires to penetrate the
Amazonian forests, a large blade slightly curved, wide and flat, and
two or three feet long, and strongly handled, which the natives wield
with consummate address. In a few hours, with the help of the
felling-sword, they had cleared the ground, cut down the underwood,
and opened large gaps into the densest portions of the wood.
In this way the work progressed. The ground was cleared in front of
the woodmen. The old trunks were divested of their clothing of
creepers, cacti, ferns, mosses, and bromelias. They were stripped
naked to the bark, until such time as the bark itself was stripped
from off them.
Then the whole of the workers, before whom fled an innumerable crowd
of monkeys who were hardly their superiors in agility, slung
themselves into the upper branches, sawing off the heavier boughs and
cutting down the topmost limbs, which had to be cleared away on the
spot.
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