We are joined by the seringueiro who is going to take us with him on his round. He is wearing a battered felt wideawake, a cotton shirt open at the neck, and an old pair of trousers that are tied round his ankles with string; his feet are bare. He carries a small axe, called a “machadinha”, and a big collection of small tin cups. When he gets to the first rubber-tree on his beat, he deals it several blows with his axe, making a girdle of cuts at a height which is conveniently within his reach. This operation is known as “tapping,” or “bleeding.” Sap immediately begins to trickle from the wounds he has made in the tree, so under each cut he has to hang one of his collecting-cups. These are fastened to the tree by means of a bit of tin on the rim, which he bends over into the bark. Some seringueiros use clay cups, which they affix to the trees with a dab of moist clay.
Evidently this tree we are standing by has often been operated upon, for it has a wide belt of scars. Some of them look as if they were the marks of very severe wounds; the gashes have healed under a new skin of bark, but in such a way that the surrounding surface of the trunk is very uneven with furrows and swellings. This disfigured appearance is a sign that the tree has been roughly treated by previous rubber-gatherers. However, if it had been as badly used by the early generations of seringueiros as were some of the Heveas, it would not now be here to tell us any tales about the reckless way in which tapping used to be done in Brazil and neighbouring countries. So little did the rubber-gatherers of the past care about the future welfare of the rubber industry of the Amazon that they often used to fell the valuable Heveas and hack them to pieces, sacrificing the source of a continuous milk-supply to their greed for getting as much rubber as possible at the moment, and with as little trouble as possible. Some time ago masters began to see that they could not afford to let their men be so wasteful; if the Hevea-trees were destroyed in the more accessible parts of the forest, which had only been opened up at much expense and under great difficulties, the hunting-grounds would have to be extended farther inland, at far greater expense and under much greater difficulties. Nowadays, owing to the growing popularity of Plantation Rubber, there is a strong feeling that tapping methods should be further improved. Brazil and the neighbouring rubber countries have wakened up to the necessity not only of safeguarding their Hevea trees against total destruction, but of protecting them against the injuries caused by unskilled operations. Many experiments are being made with a view to producing a less clumsy tool than the machadinha, and the very hard task has been taken in hand of trying to persuade a large but widely scattered army of rough men to work more carefully.
A BALATA BLEEDERS’ CAMP. [Page 47]
From a photograph in the British Guiana Section of the Imperial Institute, by permission
In tapping a rubber-tree, the cut must only go deep enough to open the cells which harbour the sap—which, by the way, in simple English is called “milk,” and in technical language “latex.” These cells are in the bark, extending from just beneath its surface to the cambium, or true outer skin of the wood. If the tapping tool pierces the wood, the tree gets maimed for life. Henceforth its supply of milk will be more difficult to get at, for when the wounds are sufficiently healed for the tree again to be tapped in the same region, the trunk will be knotted and furrowed in the way you have already seen. Consequently the milk-cells will be situated at different levels, instead of being evenly distributed beneath a covering of smooth-faced bark, and ceasing on the same level. Moreover, bad tapping makes the milk-supply poorer in both quantity and quality. And when a tree is very badly wounded in the wood it will very probably cease to give any milk at all.
While we have been talking about tapping in general, we have been following our Brazilian friend along his estrada, watching him deal with one tree after another in the same way as he treated the first one on his round. After a long walk, we get back to that first tree. The seringueiro now makes for his hut, puts away his axe, and picks up an old tin can. Once more he starts off on the same round, and now, as he goes from tree to tree, he unhooks the cups and pours their contents into the larger collecting vessel. The milk has stopped running, but the trees have yielded well this morning, and by the time the “milkman” is nearing home again he has to carry the can very steadily so as not to spill any of the morning’s supply.
It is nearly ten o’clock when we follow our leader into his hut once more, and as we have had nothing to eat since we started out at five, no wonder we do full justice to the meal he invites us to share with him, and tell ourselves that dried beef and beans make very good fare. We might think differently if we had breakfasted on this, or very similar fare, every day for months past, and were not likely to get anything very different at any meal for months to come.