The labor of axing down a tree with the girth of a village church was monstrous. The bushmen tried every way, whittling around the sides for weeks until the trunk began to resemble a pencil, chipping and chopping until a saw could finish the cut. Or chopping out a commodious room within the living tree, room enough to swing an ax, a great waste of good timber. They built platforms to lift them above the stack of debris at the base of every kauri. It took weeks to bring down a single giant. The ax alone was not enough and the trader ordered ten-foot felling saws—double-tooth rakers every four
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