Atlanta Georgian. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1912-1939, 1912-06-19
Widest JungIes Penetrated fol-
Road Wife Drives the
Golden Spike.

Dispatches from Brazil today an
nounce that tremendous preparations
are in progress for the formal opening
on July 4, of the wonderful new Ma
deria- Mamoera railroad which. aftel
having been abandoned nearly 80 years
! has heen penetrated successfullY
through 25o miles of the densest jun
gle land in the world by an Albanian
Arthur Burt .IelIyu.
The president of the republic many
officials and several regiments Of the
army will be present to pay tribute t.
the triumph of Mr.. Iekyll. and Mrs
Jekyl his bride, will pull the throttle
that starts the first train bound sea
ward with an unprecedented shipment
of rubber to American ports.
If, when he wrote soldiers of For
tune" Richard Harding Davis had
known Burt Jekyll. of Atlanta. and
how be built the unbuidable Madeira
Mamoera railroad through the Brazil
ian jungles when all but he had failed
the novelist would surely have changed
the name of his hero from Robert Clay
to A B. Jeky1 Moreover, Jekylls
hewing out of that railroad would have
made quite as heroic and satisfying
story. for Clay hadn't been able to get
all the iron ore out of the blanche
mountain when he quit the job and
whereas the book stopped when he was
only engaged to his girl Jekyl Of
Atlanta. has not only finished his I'M
buildable railroad. but he has married
in time to have Mrs. Jekyu drive the
last spike of gold.
A Soldier of Fortune.
If ever there was a real, live, moving
soldier of fortune Burt Jekyll is that
soldier. He's a member of the big
contracting firm of May. Jekyr & Ran
dolph, of New York, and that firm has
been doing nothing but digging holes
in South America building railroads
and canals where there wasn't anything
but jungle and swamps and snakes be-
fore for the past 90 years
Jekyll had just come home to see his
sister at No. GA Washington street five
years ago when he got a telegram
from one of his partners about the Bra
lillian government being about to make
one last desperate attempt to put
through the Madeira road and wanting
to pay some tremendous price to any
American engineer that thought the
great task might be possible.
Jekyr knew that the Madeira route
was designed to pass right through the
heart of the thickest South American
jungle, so as to open up a stretch OF
painless lapd to the immense rubber
trade of Bolivia. He knew that 90
years ago, even before old Dom Pedro's
time the American contracting firm OF
Collins Brothers, of Philadelphia. had
tried to build that same road and had
lost some couple of hundred men with
fever and snakebite and had sunk q
million dollars in that swamp with
nothing to show for it but an aban-
doned five miles of weed grown track
A War on Mosquitoes.
Jekylls partners told him that there
wasn't ghost of a chance in a million
of building the remaining $50 miles
of the line, but he said he'd take a
look at It anyway and he went down
to godforsaken land from Atlanta, look
ed over the jungle and got deeper into
it's Businesses than any man had ever
gone before. Then he had a talk with
Pereival Farquhar who was resident
director Of the 100000 in English cap
ital that had been subscribed to help
the government put through the road.
That talk resulted in a contract
! Three months later Jekyn was again