tree, upon the side against
which the animal had been in the habit of leaning, and about three feet
from the ground. Then with the axe he made a deep notch, where the bark
had been removed--in fact, such a notch as would have caused the tree to
fall had it been left to itself. But it was not, for before advancing
so far in his work, Swartboy had taken measures to prevent that. He had
stayed the tree by fastening the rheim to its upper branches on the
_opposite_ side, and then carrying the rope to the limbs of another tree
that stood out in that direction.

Thus adjusted, the elephant's tree was only kept from falling by the
rheim-stay; and a slight push, in the direction of the latter, would
have thrown over.

Swartboy now replaced the section of bark, which he had preserved; and
after carefully collecting the chips, no one, without close examination,
could have told that the tree had ever felt the edge of an axe.

Another operation yet remained to be performed--that was the planting of
the stakes, already prepared by Von Bloom and Hendrik. To set these
firmly deep holes had to be made. But Swartboy was just the man to make
a hole; and in less than ten minutes he had sunk three, each over a foot
deep, and not a half-inch wider than the thickness of the stakes!

You may be curious to know how he accomplished this. You would have dug
a hole with a spade, and necessarily as wide as the spade itself. But
Swartboy had no spade, and would not have used it if there had been
one--since it would have made the holes too large for his purpose.

Swartboy sunk his holes by "crowing"--which process he performed by
means of a small pointed stick. With this he first loosened the earth
in a circle of the proper size. He then took out the detached mould,
flung it away, and used the point of the "crowing stick" as before.
Another clearing out of mould, another application of the stick; and so
on, till the narrow hole was deemed of sufficient depth. That was how
Swartboy "crowed" the holes.

They were sunk in a kind of triangle near the bottom of the tree, but on
the side opposite to that where the elephant would stand, should he
occupy his old ground.

In each hole Swartboy now set a stake, thick end down and point upwards;
some small pebbles, and a little mould worked in at the sides, wedged
them as firmly as if they had grown there.

The stakes were now daubed over with soft earth, to conceal the white
colour of the