VOYAGE TO THE RIO NEGRO 197 
cultural, speculations at a great distance from the 
seaboard, then the lack of industrious hands, the 
general slowness of the people, their want of good 
faith, and their jealousy of foreigners, nearly always 
cause his projects to fail. 
Mr. M'Culloch was a native of Denny in 
Stirlingshire, and in 1850 was forty-three years of 
age — good-looking, muscular, and certainly an enter- 
prising, thoughtful, clear-headed man. He had 
first emigrated to Canada, where he worked at his 
tradie^of carpenter and machinist ; but having gone 
over to New York on a visit in 1832, he was met 
there by Mr. James Campbell of Para, who invited 
him to try his fortunes on the Amazon. At Para 
he continued to work at his trade, and in 1843, 
having by that time cleared a nice sum of money, 
he planned the erection of a sawmill, to be worked 
by water, somewhere in the interior, for the purpose 
of cutting up some of the immense quantity of 
cedar-wood floated down the Madeira and Solimoes 
every flood-time. He went, therefore, to the United 
States and purchased the requisite machinery. On 
his return he ascended the Amazon, first to San- 
tarem, then to Villa Nova, and examined all the 
likely sites for a sawmill. Near Villa Nova he 
found an excellent fall of water at the outlet of a 
lake, but the people opposed his damming the 
outlet, on the plea that it would kill the fish in the 
lake. Bafifled there, he next pitched on an outlet 
of the large lake of Saraca, and having spent 
several months and much money in building and in 
preparing his water-power, the authorities on some 
slight pretext refused to allow him to put up his 
machinery. Again driven away, he ascended to 
