The trucks, which belonged to the Rondon Commission, each carried two tons of freight and had been outfitted with wide, slatted belts that wrapped around the wheels on each side like tank treads, forming what Miller referred to as an “endless trail” through the thick mud. This invention, which anticipated the use of the first military tank two years later, during World War I, amazed and elated the explorers. “It was a strange sight to see them racing across the uninhabited chapadão at a speed of thirty miles an hour,” Miller wrote. “Surely this was exploring de luxe.”
