Long Trail

In the best hammock that the remote town of Rio Branco could provide, lean Alexander Daveron relaxed and invited his soul. What he would do next he had no idea. But of one thing he was certain--mules would have no part of it.

Daveron's repugnance to mules had a foundation that was laid in 1942. That was the year the U.S. Rubber Development Corp., desperately trying to boost Amazonian rubber production for war, decided that the seringueiros (rubber workers) needed mules for jungle transportation, and bought 1,800 of them in Sao Paulo State, in southern Brazil. But moving them 3,500 miles northwest (as the mule files) turned out to be the biggest part of the problem. An ex-canned-goods salesman, abetted by a lottery-ticket salesman and a former bus driver, gave up the job after losing more than 1,000 mules (by death and straying) in the first 200 miles.

Daveron, who knew the jungles, stepped in. First, he set up a mule hospital, treated maggot-infested wounds (from sharp jungle grass) with crude-oil rubs. With local gauchos he rounded up the strays and drove the troop to better pasture.

Shortly thereafter, Daveron and the R.D.C. agents in Rio had a difference of opinion. Daveron wanted to push west through the plains of Bolivia, then north to the rubber country. The R.D.C. preferred the route that followed the old telegraph line strung diagonally across the great Brazilian plateau by General Candido Mariano Rondon, a famed Indianologist. Neither side budged. So the R.D.C., despairing of the mules project, sold most of the beasts.

To the Amazon. Muleteer Daveron bought the remaining mules. He sold some to the Brazilian Army to finance the trip, then with 171 of the strongest he set out for the Amazon by way of Bolivia, as he had planned all along.

There was nothing easy about his route. He and his drivers fought off both Indians and rustlers. Sometimes floods held up the mule drove for months. Sometimes mules went lame crossing the rocky outcroppings in northeastern Bolivia. When that happened, the troop would halt while the animals were roped, thrown, and treated to hoof repairs. In the autumn of 1946, they were still in Trinidad, Bolivia, 400 miles from their goal.

But getting the mules through had become an obsession with Daveron. Despite swollen rivers and poor grazing (the bush seemed to grow only spiked trees, barbedwire plant and fishhook vines), Daveron pushed on. Sometimes wild pigs stampeded the troop and then jaguars clawed the strays. Last month, tired, tattered, and torn, Daveron and his mules made the Amazon. Of the original 171, only one mule had been lost--by snakebite. Some of the 170 that pulled through Daveron sold to the territorial government; others (at $250 a head) went to rubber producers.

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