the men
and patted them on the back, assuring them again that if they obeyed my
orders we should soon proceed on our journey and should certainly arrive
safely at a point where they could return home and be happy.

Alcides thereupon turned round asking me whether I intended them to cut
down the entire forest and then request them to pierce a tunnel through
the hill range--or perhaps I might want the whole hill range flattened
down for my convenience!

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
s