In another district a still more curious device is used. This is a single railway line running between two towns, on which light trucks can travel. These trucks have two wheels each, one behind the other, and to each truck is fastened a pole which projects on the left-hand side. Negroes walk beside the line, holding the poles and thus driving the cars along.
In regions where the forest is less dense and the climate more dry and healthy, animals can be used, and sometimes strange teams are seen—camels, donkeys, and oxen being all pressed into the transport service.
CHAPTER IX
THROUGH ICE AND SNOW
IN the Arctic regions, far beyond the reach of railways, and where even the sea is frozen during many months of the year, we find strange conveyances and means of travel, for in those desolate lands there are no roads. Even if a track is made it may, within a few hours, be covered with drifting snow and entirely lost.
Horses and oxen cannot live in the bitter climate of the north, so carriages, or any other wheeled conveyances, are useless. Travellers, therefore, must needs adapt themselves to the conditions of weather and country, and either invent new means of locomotion or else borrow ideas from the original inhabitants of those bleak, snow-clad lands.
The first Arctic explorers described their experiences in the Polar regions, and life among the Esquimaux has changed very little since those pioneer days when Frobisher and Sir Humphrey Gilbert set sail in search of a new route to India and the East.
"They are a very strong people and warlike," the historian of Frobisher's expedition wrote in 1577. "They go in coats made from the skins of beasts. They travel in sledges drawn by dogs, and move from place to place in quest of food."
The dogs seen then by the adventurous Englishmen and still used by the natives are sturdy, rough-haired animals, rather like large shaggy collies in appearance. They are very strong and hardy, and are able to drag heavy loads for long distances. Esquimaux sledges were often nearly twelve feet long and had runners made of the jawbones of whales or of pieces of wood strongly lashed together.