St. Landry democrat., 1884-12-20
RUBBER IN Brazil.
How 1t Is Procured and Manufactured
into an Article of Commerce.

How 1t Is Procured and Manufactured
into an Article of Commerce.
In the early morning men and wom-
en- go with baskets Of clay cups on
their backs and little hatchets to cash
the rubber trees. When the white milk
drips down from the cash they stick
their cups on the trunk with daubs of
clay, nodded, so rs to catch the whole
flow. If the tree is a large one four or
five gashes may be cut in circle
around the trunk. On the next day
other gashes are cut little below these,
and so on until the rows reach the
ground. BY eleven o'clock the flow of
milk has ceased and the seringueiros
come to collect the contents of the cups
in calabash jugs. A gill or SO is the ut
most yield from each tree and single
gatherer may attend to 100 trees or
more, wading always through these
marshes and paying dearly for his profit
in fever and weakness. The liquid is in
appearance almost precisely like milk.
Ii left in this condition it coagulates
after awhile and forms an inferior whit
ish gum. To make the black rubber of
commerce the milk must go through q
peculiar process of manufacture. Over
a smoldering fire, fed with hard nuts of
the tucuma palm, is placed a kind of
clay chimney like Wide-mouthed, bot
tomless jug; through this the thick
smoke pours in constant stream.
Then a wooden mold, like round
bladed paddle, is taken, dipped in the
milk and held over the smoke until the
liquid coagulates. Then another coat
is added, only now as the
wood is heated the milk coagulatess
faster. It may take the gatherings of
two three days to cover the mold thick
" enough. Then the rubber is still
dull white, but in a short time
it turns brown and finally al
most black, as it is sent to
the market. The mass is cut from the
paddle and sold to traders in the
village. Bottles are sometimes made
by molding the rubber over q clay ball,
which is then broken up and removed.
Our old-fashioned rubber shoes used to
be made in this way. Twenty million
pounds of rubber, valued at $6,O0O,O 900,
are annually exported from Para in the
dry season. Many thousand people are
engaged in gathering it; but the bust
ness is altogether a ruinous one for the
province, as Brazilians themselves are
| fully aware. The seringueiro, who
gains two or three dollars for a single
days gathering, has enough, as life
goes there, to keep him in idleness
week, and when his money is spent he
can draw again on his ever-ready bank.
The present wasteful system is spoken
of in the Dominica Dial as follows:
1.-The half-wild seringueiro will go on
submitting to impositions and dying
here in the swamps, until Brazlllans
learn that by purchasing this land from
the Government and planting it in rub
Der trees they can insure vastly larger
profits and do away with the evils OF
the present system. 1t is what mush
eventually be done. The rubber
patherers in their eagerness to secure
large harvests have already killeda vast
number Of trees about the Para estuary.
They have been obliged to penetrate
farther and farther into the forest, TO
the Tocantin, Madeira, Purus, RIO
Negro, and eventually even these
regions must be exhausted unless they
are protected in some way. The trees
properly planted and cared for will
Weld we'll in fifteen years, and, OF
course, the cost of gathering would be
greatly reduced in compact planta-
4 ton. Half the labor of the present
rubber-gatherer consists in his long
travels through the swampy forest. =
I m