With the World's Great Travellers, Volume 2

by Unknown

Thus he puts layer upon layer, until at last the caoutchouc on both sides of the wood has reached about an inch in thickness, when he thinks the “plancha” ready. Cutting it on one side, he takes it off the shovel and suspends it in the sun to dry, as there is always some water between the several layers, which should, if possible, evaporate. A good workman is thus able to prepare five or six pounds of solid seringa in an hour. The plancha, from its initial color of a clear silver-gray, turns shortly into a yellow, and finally becomes the well-known dark brown of the rubber, such as it is exported.

The more uniform, the denser and freer of bubbles, the whole mass is found to be, the better is its quality and the higher the price it fetches. Almost double the value is obtained for the first-rate article over that of the most inferior quality, the so-called sernamby or cabeça de negro (negro’s head); which is nothing but the drops collected at the foot of the trees, with the remains of the milk scraped out of the bottoms of the calabashes. The rubber of India is said to be much like this sernamby, and, like it, to be mixed with sand and small pieces of bark. By way of testing the quality, every plancha is cut through again at Pará; by which means discovery is made, not only of the bubbles, but also of any adulteration that might be effected with the milk of the mangaba, that fine plant with dark glossy leaves, now found so often in European saloons under the erroneous name of rubber-plant....

The wild cacao, with its large lancet-shaped hanging leaves, and its cucumber-like fruit springing directly from the stem, is one of the characteristic features of the virgem [or solid soil] on which it often forms dense thickets, which are all the more impenetrable that the boughs—exhibiting frequently at the same time the small reddish flowers and the ripe golden fruit, in which the seeds lie embedded in a sweet white marrow—bend to the ground and there take root again.

But the india-rubber and the cacao are not the only treasures worth collecting in these forests. Even now the export of the Pará nuts, the fruit of the Bertholletia excelsa, yields an annual revenue of two hundred thousand dollars; and the copaiba oil and the urucú, the seeds of the Bixa orellana, used for dyeing, about one hundred thousand dollars. These sums seem small enough, it is true, but there are perhaps a hundred times those values of the rich-flavored nuts rotting unheeded in the forests, and above a score of other rich oily seeds, at present collected only for the use of the natives, not to mention several resins which yield the finest varnishes, plants giving the most brilliant hues, and others with fibres that would serve not only for the finest weavings, but also for the strongest ropes; besides about forty of the most indispensable drugs, all which might become most valuable articles of export....

Notwithstanding the fertility of tropical vegetation, I doubt whether any other part of the world, in the same latitude, can offer as great a number of useful plants as does the Amazon Valley; and now, when all-transforming steam is about to open up to us this rich emporium, European industry should take advantage of the hitherto neglected treasures. What might not be done with the fibres, some of which surpass our hemp and flax in all respects? The curauá, for example, a sort of wild pine-apple, gives a delicate transparent flax of a silky lustre, such as is used in the Philippine Islands, on a large scale, it appears. It is sold under the name of palha at Rio de Janeiro. The tucum and the javary would make excellent ropes, cords, nets, etc., well calculated to resist moisture and rot; and the piassaba, the murity, etc., would readily supply solid brushes, brooms, hammocks, hats, baskets, mats; while the snow-white bast of others would give excellent paper.

The lianas or cipós of these countries are, besides their minor uses, quite indispensable to the half-civilized natives for the construction of their light cottages, taking the place (as they do) of our nails and cramp-irons, beams, posts, and rafters. The whole palm-leaf roof is fastened, and artificially interwoven and intertwined, with tough creepers of nearly an inch thickness....

In the hot lowlands of the Amazon, in the shade of endless forest, there is many an herb of mysterious virtue, as yet known only to wild Indian tribes, while the fame of others has already spread over the ocean. Who has not heard of the urary, or curare, the quick arrow-poison which, in the hands of clever physiologists and physicians, promises not only to become a valuable drug, but to give us interesting disclosures on the activity of the nerves?

The wondrous tales of former travellers regarding the preparation of this urary have been rectified long ago. The venom of snakes is not used for it, but the juice of the bruised stems and leaves of several kinds of strychnos and apocyneas is simply boiled over a coal fire, mixed with tobacco-juice and capsicum (Spanish pepper), and thickened with the sticky milk of some Euphorbiacea to a hard mass. This manipulation, moreover, is not undertaken by the old squaws of the tribe, devoting themselves to a painful death thereby, as the old stories ran, but, as there is no danger whatever, by the young wives of the warriors, who look upon it as part of their household duties, or by the men themselves. There are about eight or ten different poisons of similar, but not identical, composition and preparation, of which the urary of the Macusi Indians, and the curare, from Venezuela and New Granada, are considered the most powerful.

This dark-brown, pitchy substance, usually kept in little earthen pots, is lightly spread over the points of the weapons,—their long arrows, their light spears, and the thin wooden shafts, of about a foot long, which they shoot through immense blow-tubes (sarabacanas). Immediately upon the diffusion in the blood of the slightest portion of the poison, the limbs, one by one, refuse to work, as if overcome with torpor, while the mind apparently retains its activity until death ensues, which it does in a few minutes’ time, from palsy of the lungs. It is strange that only those nerves are affected which regulate the movements depending on our own will, whereas those movements we cannot control—the beating of the heart, for example—continue unaltered to the very last. Experiments made by French physicians upon animals have shown that, if the lungs are artificially kept in activity for several hours, the poison will be rejected by natural means, and no bad consequences will ensue. Of late the principal objection to the employment of the urary in medicine—its unequal strength—has been completely overcome by the effective alkaloid—the curarin—being extracted. This is about twenty times as powerful as the urary, and has been used successfully in the treatment of tetanus. The Indians shoot birds and monkeys, which they wish to tame, with very weak curare, rousing them from the lethargy which overpowers them with large doses of salt or sugar-juice; and this treatment is said to be very effective, also, in the reduction of their wildness....

The guraná, prepared from the fruit of the Paullinia sorbilis, is a hard, chocolate-brown mass, of a slightly bitter taste, and of no smell whatever. It is usually sold in cylindric pieces of from ten inches to a foot in length, in which the half-bruised almond-like seeds are still distinguishable; the more homogeneous and the harder the mass, the better is its quality. To render it eatable, or rather drinkable, it is rasped as fine as possible on the rough, bony roof of the mouth of the Sudis gigas (pirá-rucú), and mixed with a little sugar and water. A teaspoonful in a cup of warm water is said to be an excellent remedy in slight attacks of ague.