Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1879-06-09
RUBBER-GATHERING ON THE
AMAZONS.

industry occurs IN the second
paper in the Scribner series on Brazil
by Herbert H. Smith, who writes from
personal experience:
The rubber-swamps are all around,
but land travelling is out of the question.
So an Indian canoe man is engaged
good-natured fellow, and an adept in
wood-craft. He sets us across the river
at half-ruined hut. where bright vines
Chamber over the broken thatch and hang
in long festoons in front of the low door
way; but within, the floor is sodden
black clay, and dark mold hangs on the
sides, and the air is like a sepulcher.
The single slovenly msanaelwca women
who inhabits the place complains of the
ague which tortures her; yet year after
year, until the house falls to pieces, she
will 60 on dying here, because forsooth,
it is her own and the rubber trees are
near. She will not even repair the
structure. You can see sky through the
roof, but if rain drives in she will swing
her hammock in another corner, and
shiver on through the night as best she
may; for tomorrow there are rubber
trees to be tapped, and a fresh harvest
of the precious milk to be brought home,
and what will you have? One must
expect discomfort in swamp.
Back of the House the rubber-trees
are scattered through marshy forest,
where we Chamber over logs, and sink
into pools of mud, and leap the puddles
where the mosquitoes are blood-thirsty,
and nature is damp, and dark, and
threatening; where the silence is un-
broken by beast or bird,-a silence that
can be felt; it is like tomb in which
we are buried, away from the sunshine,
away from brute and man, alone with
rotting death. The very beauty of our
forest tomb makes US shudder by its
intenseness.
In the early morning, men and women
come with baskets of clay cups on their
backs, and little hatchets to cash the
trees. Where the white milk drips
down from the cash they stick their
cups on the trunk with daubs of clay,
nodded so as to catch the whole flow. If
the tree is large one, four or five CASH
es may be cut in circle around the
trunk. On the next day other gashes
are made little below these, and so on
until the rows reach the ground. By
eleven o'clock the flow Of milk has ceas-
ed, and the seringaseirOs come to collect
the contents of the cups in calabash jugs.
A gill or so is the utmost yield from
each tree, and single gatherer may at
tend to a hundred and twenty trees or
more. wadiug always through these dark
marshes, and paying dearly for his
profit in fever and weakness.
Our mameluca hostess has brought in
her days gatherings calabash full OF
the white liquid, in appearance precise
" like milk. If left in this condition
it coagulates after while and forms
an inferior whitish gum. To make the
black rubber of commerce the milk must
go through a peculiar process of manu-
facture, for which our guide has been
preparing. Over a smouldering fire,
fed with the hard nuts of the tucatnao
palm, he places a kind of clay chimney,
like a widemouthed, bottomless jug
through this boiao the thick smoke pours
in a constant stream. Now he takes
his mold,-in this case a wooden one.
like round bladed paddle.-washes il
with the milk, and holds it over the
smoke until the liquid coagulates. Their
another coat is added, only now. as the
wood is heated. the milk coagulates fast
er. 1t may take the gatherings of two
or three days to cover the mold thickly
enough. Then the rubber is still dul
. white, but in a short time it turn'
t brown and finally almost black, as it i
sent to the market. The mass is Gu
a from the paddle and sold to traders il
the village. Bottles are sometimes mad
by molding the rubber over clay bal
which is then broken up and removed
: Our old fashioned rubber shoes used t.
a be made in this way.