Vilas County news. [volume] (Eagle River, Vilas County, Wis.) 1896-1927, 1924-02-20
A Travelling Restaurant in Singapore.

of the world, and the trees that pro-,
duce the sap that makes cord tires
that carry millions over city streets
and country roads are found in or
dered rows of a neat orchard. In
eight years the Malay archipelago has
captured the rubber trade, lock, stock
and barrel, and now produces nearly
80 per cent of the world supply, two
thirds of which comes to the United
States. The Amazon valley is now
only a supplemental source of rubber.
Singapore, as the central shipping
point of the sprawling archipelago,
sits proudly in the spotlightethrown
on the romance of rubber.
1t is to the prompt action and re-
that the British empire is indebted for
shifting the world source of raw rub
Der from Para to Singapore. AS the
result of long and careful study of
rubber trees in the Brazilian forests
he formed the theory that these valu-
able trees could be cultivated and that
the eastern tropics would prove par
He brought his experience to the
notice of the director of Kew gar
dens, London, and in 1876 the Indian
government agreed to finance the in
PRODUCTION of the rubber tree into In
dia. Sir Henry Wickham was in
trusted with the difficult task of pro-
curing a quantity of hevea seeds and
delivering them to the Indian govern
ment. The greatest problem was how
to get the seeds out of the country,
because their expectation was prohib-
tied by Brazil.
How They Got Rubber Trees.
While engaged in carrying out his
researches on the banks of the Anna
zon, Sir Henry Wickham was one day
surprised by the arrival of an ocean
liner the steamship Amazonas. Wick
ham seized his opportunity and char
tered the ship on behalf of the govern
ment of India He arranged to send
it up the river to an appointed spot
| the junction with the Tapajos-where
| he succeeded in meeting it with a
good supply of seeds gathered in the
interior The seeds were shipped, and
the vessel headed it's way down the
mighty river.
The seeds were planted at Kew and
q fair number terminated. The young
plants were packed in special boxes
known as Wardian cases and dis
patched to India But India could not
afford to adopt item, so they went to
| Ceylon and eventually to the Malay
peninsula and other parts of the East.
The failure of the coffee plantations,
| due to a leaf disease, some thirty or
forty years ago, forced planters to
! look around for some other culture,
| and small acreages were planted from
the seeds of the trees which had
| sprung from Wickham's original Bra
| lillian plants. More than 300,000O00
| rubber trees in British and Dutch
possessions are products of the parent
seeds Struggled by the English knight.
| Singapore has become a substitute
+; Paris for the tropic Far East. ,NabobS
and the more prosperous of Polynesia
esteem this metropolis just as An.er1-
cans and Europeans do the French
capital. Sultans of the tiny states
composing the Malay Federation make
long sojourns in Singapore. They sx-
| change freedom from responsibility
and luxurious living for British conttol
in their tiny kingdoms. Since t1e
British do an infinitely better job Of
administering than the9 sultans could
| do. no one is loser To this troIic
Paris also come British officials of the
empire on short vacations from their
irving posts. If they seek relief frGla
| tropic. climate they can profitaby fo.'-
get about gay S'pore. The thermoln-
eter there never goes above 90 degrees,
it is said, but it never goes below y
| degrees and the dampness is insult
| ferable.
Down at the quays great steamships
are fed with coal by Chinese coolies,
who toll silently and expeditiously. A
/ well-groomed Chinese on the pier su-
perintends the lading of queer-looking
cases containing birds nests, con-
signed TO epicures in Hongkong and
Canton. The Chinaman's priced
dainty is soup made from glutinous
birds nests found In Borneo caves.