The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1875-02-20 00:00:00

AFRICAN GUM TREES.

Among the Consular Reports issued is one from
Zanzibar, giving an account, by Captain Elton of the
Mti Sandarusi, or gum copal trees of Dar-es:Salam.
Leaving the town, and passing through a clearing of
the usual East Coast description, he soon reached a
spot where the slaves employed in clearing land had
come upon an extensive belt of these trees. Their
immense size and number astonished him. He
measured an average tree, and found it 60ft.
high with the top branches lopped off; the girth
at the ground was 41t. 3in., and it was 2ft. 10in.
at the first branch, above 21ft. from the ground.
On stripping off the bark the gum was found de-
posited in man # places between it and the wood in a
liquid form. Where the tree was injured a resinous
gum had collected in considerablequantities, and it was
ajso seen on the lower sides of the branches of several
trees; and one of the two slave guides stated that his
wife had received a dollar for what she had dug at the
foot of a tree where a rotten branch had fallen. It
seemed probable that where trees have been left to fall
to pieces from old age, large quantities of gum may be
found buried. Insects innumerable live on the MU
Sandarusi. One branch was cut down, in which a
family of ants had formed a large nest behind a
wall of the gum, and were rapidly undermining
the heart of the wood; and legions of wood-lice as well
as ants were to be seen between the bark and the
wood. Captain Elton and Lieutenant P. Pullen, who
accompanied him, came to the conclusion that the
attacks of the swarms of ants and other insects led
to the slow but sure destruction of these trees, and
that as the heart of the wood becomes undermined,
a tree throws out the resinous gum almost, it would
seem, in an effort to arrest the process of decay. After
the fall of the tree a few years would bury the wreck
in the shifting sand which covers the surface of the
sienna-coloured subsoil, rich in vegetable remains, in
which the copal tree is found. The slaves stated that
one could travel for two days into the interior before
losing the Mti Sandarusi ; but Captain Elton says that
at the rate at which the clearing progresses, it will
not be long before this copal tree wood becomes a thing
of the past. Almost all the trees are festooned
with the long intertwined ropes of the indiarubber
Uiana, the thickly-matted cords of which, pendant
from the main limbs and knotted into a sort of rigging,
supply easy means of ascent to the natives looking for
the resinous deposits on the branches. This india-
rubber was at one time worked rather extensively here,
but was given up as unprofitable in consequence of
the number of !ilave lads carried off by leopards. The
slave guides easily worked up two large balls of india-
rubber for Captain Elton. After making deep
longitudinal incisions in the main ropes of theUiana,
they smeared on the left. arm the milky substances
which exuded profusely; and when enough had been
procured, this was stripped off in flakes and rolled up
in the hands until it assumed the shape of a small
dumpling, At Dares Salam it commands a price of
from $G to $lO per frasilah of 351bs.
• ~.