A highway eaten by the jungle. This is all that remains on the Rupununi Cattle Trail, that once stretched from the interior of Guyana to the Berbice River (where cattle would be taken on to the coast by boat). It was started during WW1, by HPC Melville, to meet a surge in surge in demand for beef, and would be one of the most ambitious private trails in the world. It was marked out with iron pegs (like that in the photo).
Before it was complete, HPB sold his shares, and, in 1923, he retired to London. It was years before his purchasers realised their mistake. The cattle trail was a gruesome failure. At the first attempt to use it, over 70% of the animals simply vanished in the forest. But still the buyers persisted. They bought more wire, and installed one drunken manager after another. Perhaps the worst was a Mr Connel. ‘Women were his hobby,’ states a company report, ‘drink his downfall, and an aversion to work his ingrained habit’. After that, the trail had only a moment of prosperity before the age of the plane. Eventually, in 1953, it was closed for good.
