Rubber

by Edith A. Browne

It is not at all likely that the natives of Brazil had received any help from the natives of Haïti or Mexico in the matter of discovering that tree and the peculiar value of its sap. For the aborigines of Southern America are not given to wandering off to foreign lands either on business or pleasure, and even in these days it is only the very enthusiastic traveller or the man whose living depends on the rubber industry who undertakes a journey into the interior of Brazil, where, for the most part, the means of communication are still very primitive.

So far, I have shown you there is little doubt that the aborigines of Brazil discovered the rubber in their own country; and I think I have given you sufficient evidence for asking you to believe that the discovery was made off their own bat, and at quite as early a period as the natives of Haïti and of Mexico separately and independently discovered the rubber-trees in their own homelands.

I will now give you some further proofs that there is more truth than fiction in the story I told you.

Come with me into the Brazilian forests this very day. The scenery, you find, is so wildly beautiful that words cannot possibly do it justice, much less exaggerate its delights; in spite of the coming of the European, and the annual invasion by hundreds of rubber-gatherers, few changes have been made in the name of Progress within these forests; so in the days before the white man knew of their existence they must have looked very much the same as they do now. And the pure-bred Brazilian native has not been entirely wiped off the face of his homeland. You may still come across some of the aborigines, and they still scorn clothes, adorn themselves with feathers and beads, carry a blowpipe, hunt their meat, and trap their fish.

As we start off along a track that has little or no more claim to be called a path than had the Indian trail in my story, I point out to you a specimen of the rubber-yielding tree that is a native of these forests. Very soon you notice for yourselves that there are numbers of these trees in the district. Were you a son of these wilds, wholly dependent on your surroundings for anything and everything in the way of supplies, would you not try to find out whether this tree cannot be made to provide you with something to eat or drink or play with?

Take out your penknife, and cut into the bark of one of these trees. Out oozes a thickish white substance, some of which drops on to your fingers. Without a moment’s thought or hesitation, it comes natural to you to rub thumb against sticky fingers, whereupon the substance gradually solidifies, and at last breaks loose in the form of a tiny pellet. In a similarly simple way the mere savage discovered rubber hundreds of years ago; only he used a flint axehead, or maybe a sharp tooth of some animal, instead of a penknife.

With regard to the method of collecting rubber by scraping a hole in the earth, and leaving the sap which trickled down into it to be dried by the natural heat of the earth and the air, I can only assure you that the white man found the aborigines “making” raw rubber in this way, so they must have invented the plan themselves.

To defend my choice of Brazil as the scene of my story, I must now justify my statement that the discovery of rubber in this country has been of more importance than similar discoveries in the forests of other lands.

The native rubber-tree of Brazil, botanically known as Hevea brasiliensis, yields the finest quality rubber. This specially good material is called “Para rubber,” after the port of Para, at the mouth of the Amazon, which was the first centre of distribution.

The whole flourishing rubber industry of to-day owes its origin to the trade which sprang up in Para rubber, following on the colonization of the Amazon Valley by the Portuguese. During the first half of the eighteenth century Lisbon began to import rubber goods, such as hats, boots, bags, and capes, from Brazil, and in 1759 the Government of Para sent a suit of rubber clothes as a present to the King of Portugal. In the early part of the eighteenth century, too, France began to take an interest in rubber, and it was not long before other countries, including England, began to experiment with the new material.