Across Unknown South America

by Arnold Henry Savage Landor

I paid no attention, but ordered him to cut sixty rollers instead of thirty. I had to keep a sharp watch on my men that day, and I had fully decided, if any disobedience took place, I would shoot them. I think they thoroughly realized that, because they carried out all my instructions to the letter.

When that job was done I explored the district carefully, in order to discover which was the easiest point over which the canoe could be made to climb the hill range. Having found a way which I thought suitable, I myself took one of the large knives, and ordered the other men to come with me with all the implements we could use in order to clear a sufficiently wide road through which the canoe could pass. This work lasted many hours, and was certainly trying.

On August 3rd we worked the entire day, from sunrise until seven in the evening, cutting a way through the forest. Then, when we had done that, I constructed, with the longer trees we had cut down, a small railway from the water, where the canoe was. I used the rollers on these rails made of the smoothest trees I could find. When my men grasped the idea—of which they had never dreamed—they became very excited and in a good humour. They worked extremely hard. It was a portentous effort to get the canoe on to the first roller, but once we had got her on the first and second and third rollers, and were able to lift her stern out of the water with levers and pieces of wood we gradually placed under her, she began to move along on the rollers with comparative ease. We moved the rails in front as we went along, and all went well until we got to the foot of the hill.

There the trouble began: first of all because it was difficult to keep the rollers in position on the rails; then also because the moment we started to push the canoe up the hill she would slide back almost as far as, and sometimes farther than, we had pushed her up. By a judicious use of ropes which we made fast to trees on either side, and by a careful study of the laws of leverage, we managed to push up the canoe a few inches at a time. We had some narrow escapes once or twice, when the ropes, under the excessive strain, snapped, and the canoe slid down again, dragging us with her. One tree, to which one of the ropes was fastened, broke, and in its fall just missed killing a man.

When once we had begun pushing the canoe up that hill we could not leave her for a moment, as she would at once proceed to slide back on the rollers.

Fourteen hours' incessant hard work saw us and the canoe on the top of the hill. From there we had before us a very steep descent of some 400 ft., the first 150 ft. almost vertical.

My men all looked at me in a most inquisitive way in order to find out how I should manage to hold the canoe when we let her down that steep incline.

I had fastened some pieces of wood vertically at her stern, which, by scraping on the ground, would hold her to a certain extent. Then, with all the ropes we possessed we made her fast to the trees as we went along, and let her slide gently, the weight of the canoe being such that deep grooves were actually cut into the trees as the ropes unwound themselves.

Photograph showing the Road cut by Author across the Forest in order to take the Heavy Canoe Overland.