With at least an improvement in the trail it became possible for a rubber company to induce cargadores or packers to transport merchandise and rubber and to have a fair chance of success. Whereupon a rubber company was organized which obtained a concession of 28,000 hectares (69,188 acres) of land on condition that the company finish a road one and one-half meters wide to the Pongo, connecting with the road which the government had extended to Yavero. The land given in payment was not continuous but was selected in lots by the company in such a way as to secure the best rubber trees over an area several times the size of the concession. The road was finished by William Tell after four years’ work at a cost of about seventy-five thousand dollars. The last part of it was blasted out of slate and limestone and in 1912 the first pack train entered Puerto Mainique.
The first rubber was taken out in November, 1910, and productive possibilities proved by the collection of 9,000 kilos (19,841 pounds) in eight months.
If a main road were the chief problem of the rubber company the business would soon be on a paying basis, but for every mile of road there must be cut several miles of narrow trail ([Fig. 14]), as the rubber trees grow scattered about—a clump of a half dozen here and five hundred feet farther on another clump and only scattered individuals between. Furthermore, about twenty-five years ago rubber men from the Ucayali came up here in launches and canoes and cut down large numbers of trees within reach of the water courses and by ringing the trunks every few feet with machetes “bled” them rapidly and thus covered a large territory in a short time, and made huge sums of money when the price of rubber was high. Only a few of the small trees that were left are now mature. These, the mature trees that were overlooked, and the virgin stands farther from the rivers are the present sources of rubber.
In addition to the trails small cabins must be built to shelter the hired laborers from the plateau, many of whom bring along their women folk to cook for them. The combined expense to a company of these necessary improvements before production can begin is exceedingly heavy. There is only one alternative for the prospective exploiter: to become a vagrant rubber gatherer. With tents, guns, machetes, cloth, baubles for trading, tinned food for emergencies, and with pockets full of English gold parties have started out to seek fortunes in the rubber forests. If the friendship of a party of Indians can be secured by adequate gifts large amounts of rubber can be gathered in a short time, for the Indians know where the rubber trees grow. On the other hand, many fortunes have been lost in the rubber country. Some of the tribes have been badly treated by other adventurers and attack the newcomers from ambush or gather rubber for a while only to overturn the canoe in a rapid and let the river relieve them of selfish friends.
The Compañia Gomera de Mainique started out by securing the good-will of the forest Indians, the Machigangas. They come and go in friendly visits to the port at Yavero. If one of them is sick he can secure free medicine from the agent. If he wishes goods on credit he has only to ask for them, for the agent knows that the Indian’s sense of fairness will bring him back to work for the company. Without previous notice a group of Indians appears:
“We owe,” they announce.
“Good,” says the agent, “build me a house.”
They select the trees. Before they cut them down they address them solemnly. The trees must not hold their destruction against the Indians and they must not try to resist the sharp machetes. Then the Indians set to work. They fell a tree, bind it with light ropes woven from the wild cotton, and haul it to its place. That is all for the day. They play in the sun, do a little hunting, or look over the agent’s house, touching everything, talking little, exclaiming much. They dip their wet fingers in the sugar bowl and taste, turn salt out upon their hands, hold colored solutions from the medicine chest up to the light, and pull out and push in the corks of the bottles. At the end of a month or two the house is done. Then they gather their women and babies together and say:
“Now we go,” without asking if the work corresponds with the cost of the articles they had bought. Their judgment is good however. Their work is almost always more valuable than the articles. Then they shake hands all around.
“We will come again,” they say, and in a moment have disappeared in the jungle that overhangs the trail.