"On reaching the group of trees, which numbered seventeen of various sizes, my Carib friends first cut away the twining creepers that almost hid the trunks, and then carefully removed a couple of buruchas, natural ropes of rubber, formed in the following manner: From incisions in the bark, possibly caused by woodpeckers or some insect, the juice often exudes, trickling down the trunk, in and out of the encircling creepers, and sometimes reaching the ground. The milky stream coagulates and turns black as it runs, forming a long strip or cord, with which the huléros often tie up their bales.
"The parasites removed, Pete and José strapped on their espuelas (climbing spurs), fastened at the knee and ankle, and having dug a small pit or basin at the foot of each of a couple of trees, passed a ring of stout rope round the trunks and their own waists, and walked up with their machetes between their teeth. By lifting the rope at every step they were enabled to stand almost erect, and when lying back in the ring both hands were at liberty.
"José, whom I watched closely, commenced operations immediately below the first branch. With his broad-bladed sword he cut in the bark a horizontal canal which almost encircled the trunk and terminated in a V-shaped angle. From the point of the V downwards he next cut a perpendicular canal about two feet in length, which joined another horizontal channel ending in a V, and so on to the ground. In the last cut he inserted a large green leaf to serve as a funnel and guide the milk into the basin.
"The Brazilian rubber collectors always place a receptacle of tin or earthenware in the hole at the foot of the tree to prevent the admixture of grit or other foreign matters; they also strain the milk through coarse muslin; hence the greater value of Pará rubber. But Nicaraguan methods are primitive."
In the Congo Free State the taxes are paid by the collection of rubber. It is alleged that "if the demands for rubber or other produce were not satisfied, the people at fault were flogged often most barbarously with a thong of twisted hippopotamus hide, called the chicotta. Or else the natives were told to catch the women from the offending villages, who were brought to the Chef de Poste and imprisoned by him as hostages for the industry of their husbands. Or else the sentries shot some of the defaulters as examples to the rest. Frequently there were armed expeditions into refractory districts and widespread promiscuous slaughter. The cannibal soldiers of the State or of the Company sometimes feasting on the bodies of the slain."[136]
The supply of rubber has of recent years shown signs of becoming exhausted. As time goes on the Indians of the Amazon and Orinoco must every year travel deeper into the inaccessible forests of the Amazon, Orinoco, or in Nicaragua. Every year also makes it more difficult for the Malagasy in Madagascar, or the Negroes in West Africa and the Congo, to gather sufficient rubber for the world's ever-growing needs. Liberia, the Negro Republic, is said still to possess plenty of rubber; but it is probable that the true solution of the difficulty will be found in the plantation of rubber trees. The exports from Madagascar in 1903 were valued at 2,585,000 francs; from Brazil, £9,700,000; from Nicaragua, 400,000 gold pesos (twelve pesos to the £); from the Congo, 47,000,000 francs; but even then about 85,000 rupees worth of rubber was exported from plantations in Ceylon. Unfortunately the trees do not begin to yield until they are eight years old, but the estimated profit per acre is very high, at least according to some authorities, who give a yield of £88 per acre (in Nicaragua).
One cannot help hoping that this will be the case. When one thinks, e.g., of the Uachins in the forests at the head of Namkong, who spend forty days in carrying their rubber on men's shoulders across the mountains to Assam, or of the horrible stories of the Congo Free State, plantation seems decidedly a more satisfactory method of supplying us with golf balls and bicycle tyres.
The first account of india-rubber is found in Herrera (Columbus's second voyage), who describes the way in which the natives play "with great dexterity and nimbleness." "They struck balls with any part of their bodies."
Juan de Torquemada in 1615 gives quite a good description of the Castilloa rubber:—
"The tree is held in great estimation, and grows in a hot country. It is not a very high tree: the leaves are round and of an ashy colour: it yields a white milky substance, thick and gummy and in great abundance. It is wounded with axe or cutlass, and from the wound the liquid drops into calabashes: Indians who have got no calabashes smear their bodies over with it (for nature is never without a resource), and when it becomes dry remove the whole incrustation."[137]