Show I RUBBERHUN TING J Visit to a Typical Rubber Camp in Brazil I HOW THE INDUSTRY IS PURSUED Explorations a Thousand Miles Up the Amazon Ama-zon in the Heart of the Greatest Bub ber eclionbn the Globe Special Correspondence ol THE HERALD MAJTAOSJ Brazil Oct 5Being in any of I those Amazonian towns where everything reeks of India rubberwhere it is the one engrossing industry of the people the one topic of conversation the one thing constantly j 1 I con-stantly seen smelled and tasted you are euro to be seized by the spirit of discovery I sooner or later and a burning desire to I turn hunter yourself and become a hab itante if for ever so brier n period of a genuine rubbercamp in the wilderness And nothing is easier than to gratify thIs laudable ambition especially if you are taken with it at Manaos thousand miles up the mighty river in the heart of the greatest rubber producing aecton of the globe In our case it was particularly easy for our host is a rubber merchant as arc most of the substantial citizens of the place who keeps from fifty to one hundred Indians In-dians constantly employed as collectors under the leadership of n captain or head collector their own choosing It happens that their present main camp maybe may-be reached without difficulty by a two days journey up the Rio Negro on one of the regular steamers and then disembarking disem-barking at a certain point in the wilderness wilder-ness near the mouth of an unnamed affluent by a slower canoe cruise of several hours between junglecovered banks where apparently human beings never came before At the flrst indication of our desire which bad evidently been expected and partially prepared for a party was made up headed by mine host and his famiy servants were sent ahead With tents and provisions asd Indian boatmen boat-men summoned from the distant camp to meet us at the junction of the rivers To our kind entertainers It was merely a Ticasant little picnic excursion SUCh as low Yorkers are wont to make up the Hudson but to us it wasan event of magnitude mag-nitude fraught with perils and adventures enough to keep the average Yankee of either sex in yarning material for a lifetime life-time Think of it the Amazon river measures more miles straight across its moult than the whole navigable length of the lordly Hudson PERILOUS TRAVELING And then syppose those Indian boatmen should fail to be on hand at the appointed time and place and we De left like the Cabas in the woods among boas and tiger and goodness knows what other terrors I And later when being paddled up the nameless igcuapc which is hundreds of I miles from auywheie acd so narrow a i stream that the dense wall of vegetation towering upon Doth aides keeps it in perpetual per-petual twilight and the absoiuie silence of the primeval solitude is mournfully oppres awe Suppose the halfsavage guides who certainli look capable of any atrocity should conclude it were better paying business to rob and murder their charges what in the world was there to prevent them We thought of the harrowing experiences ex-periences of Madame Godin des Odonais in these same wilds of which I must tell you i anon and of the thousands of explorers whose hearts were fired with missionary mission-ary zeal or love of nature or search for the fabled El Dorado or greed of gold and conquest who have perished miserably here aad there is none to tell their story We remembered Cape lain Mayne Reins treedwelling savages who delight to puncture Amazonian travelers trav-elers th poisoned arrows shot ix m blowguns and the monster serpents of the same author which lie in wuit upon overhanging branches and swallow them boats and all But in our expedition it turned out that there was almost disappointing disap-pointing dearth of perilous adventure and not a single hairbreadth escape to chronicle The Indians we encountered despite their unprepossessing appearance proved to be the most docile gentle and tractible of creatures and probably the aerial savages and manswallowing snakes disgusted with the increasing frequency of numan invasion have retired farther into the wilderness ECJISIABl OF I > TBRETI G TACTS The following facts stated briefly as possible are a summary of the information we have picked up in Brazil from divers sources relative to the rubber trade Like other industries in various parts of tile world it appears to be controlled by capital cap-ital on the scriptural plan of to him that hath shall be given wnile the actual toilers toil-ers are very poorly paid for their labor Hereabouts it is customary for a wealthy man to obtain a grant of land of greater or less extent according to nis political in lluence and financial powers of persuasion with the exclusive right of gathering rubber thereon for a stated number of years The entire river trade of the Amazon Ama-zon is run on the credit system The rubber hunters who lire mostly Indians are fitted out by their employers much us t American miners used to be supplied with grub stakes In their search for precious metals Each nunter before he sets forth on a fresh journey is provided with a gun a Quantity of ammunition blanket hammock I ham-mock and enough provisions to sustain mm from two to six months all of which is charged to his account at the highest mar I kut price and in return he stipulates to cell to this same accommodating dealer at I some fixed sum per pound all tbe rubber ho may collect during his trip after paying what be owes for the outfit But he seldom gets the debt paid up and according to the laws of Brazil as long as he owes a p < my the man to whom he is indebted can aim him for work holidays and all in u bondage akin to slavery They are engaged in the first place for a term of years and the majority ma-jority of hunters in consequence of their debts and propensity to drink up all available avail-able cash in the form of chicha are practically prac-tically never released from the contract Ihe employers in their turn are bound to be in debt to the small traders in the river towns to whom they sell the rubber They pay absurdly high prices for inferior infe-rior goods and get little for the product of tbe enterprise as compared to tho price of rubber wben it gets out of the clutches of tile middle men while those who do all the actual work and endure the risks and hardships get nest to nothing The small trader likewise is in debt to tho wholesale whole-sale dealer at Para and the wholesaler it even more deeply indebted to the New York Baltimore or London firm which furnishes him with supplies and finally secures se-cures the rubber Somebody makes heavy profits out of every transaction but it is not the poor Indian upon whose courage and powers of endurance all depends nor yet the smaller traders A TRADE OF MAY MILLIONS The annual exportation of India rubber from Para is said to be upwards of twenty million pounds worth from 0000000 to 19000000 The rubber tree of Brazil I I SjpJionta ddfcttca a near relative of the Ffcue elastica of the East Indies end the I I Vrceola elastica of Asia is really a giants giant-s ecles of milkweed It begins to yield when about fifteen years old and the government has repeatedly suggested plans for cultivating it by planting large areas with trees and conducting the business busi-ness like that of coffee and sugar plantations planta-tions But the Brazilians seem to be peculiarly pe-culiarly devoid of the power to take along a-long look ahead and so far nobody has been found willing to watt fifteen years for the first returns of an investment Hereabouts the rubber bunters are called Slringnrios as in Central America they are called Yularoes They usually go out j I in small patties having chosen one of their own number as captain and as soon cs the rubber nwamps are reached they select s suitable piu for the base of operation opera-tion and proceed to construct a rude u J L 10 i a < camp which serves as tho general rendezvous rendez-vous They then wander off singly and in couples searching all day fir new trees and returning to headquarters at nightfall night-fall The camp consists of a central hut built upon stilts to elevate it above the malariahaunted morass in which rubber trees most abound with palmthatched I roof projecting all around like that of a Swiss chalet There are neither windows nor door to this l rude home nor any I Interior furnishings except hooks upon which hammocks may be suspended when rains dmo their owners inside Ordinarily Ordi-narily all out doors serves well for a kitchen and the men prefer to suspend their sleeping paraphernalia from the trees around the central fire built for the triple purpose of frightmng away prowling prowl-ing beasts counteracting the effects of deadly dews and miasmas and keeping off those troublesome pests mosquitoes gnats and garripotan All around tee little camp is boundless forests so dense that it is impossible im-possible to penetrate it the distance of a rod beyond the hut except in those paths I which the hunters have partially cleared j I with infinite toll But f can assure you that a visitor feels no call to walk I abroad in spongy marshes where every step sinks him in above the shoetops and I poisonous watersnakes are Known to lurk and jaguars prowl in search of prey THK HUNTEKS LIFE As may be imagined the hunters life is little above that of the wild beasts whose bowlings make night hideous around him and he is constantly exposed to a thousand dangers seen and unseen Not only do hungry pumas wild boars and other powerful pow-erful animals abound but deadly reptiles no longer than your finger and tiny insects in-sects whose sting is fatal There are veo lizzaruo the exact color of the leaves under which they bide and innumerable creeping creep-ing and crawling things more dangerous than the dreaded rattler of our northern wilds which at least gives some warning of his intention strike while even more to be feared than tho monstrous crocodiles of the lagoons and serpents of hugging proclivities pro-clivities are the fevers that float upon the noxious vapors of the tierrr cahente TBEATJIBJT OP THE SAP The hunter as he goes his daily rounds I makes a number of fresh cuts around the trunk of each tree which He has previously marked as his own especial property pro tern and sets his little clay cup to catch I the valuable sap that will oozo from the incision in-cision Later in tho day he repeats the round carrying a queer sort of bucket made fram a big gourd which has a cover and handle of braided palm fiber and into it he empties the collected contents of all the little cups When ho gets back to camp he pours the juice fr6in tho calabash pall into the mammoth shell of a torturuga or Amazon turtle In that stage the yellowish white fluid resembles good rich Jersey cream more nearly than anything else to which I can compare it Different ways of I coagulating it into tho article known to I commerce are practiced in various parts of the world Here it is held on a wooden I paddle over a fire of palm nuts which has been built under a clay pot shaped like a I huge lamp chimney The dense white smoke issuing from the top of the pot hardens it into a leathery substance and at the same time changes its color from pale yellow to black As fast as it hardens more sap is poured on until the mass of rubber on the paddle is as heavy as a man can handle when it is sliced off with a huge knife In Central America the fluid is coagulated coagu-lated with tne sap of a wild vine somewhat resembling the grape which overgrows all those tangled forests and acts the part of a rennet to cheese curd or motherpulque to crude maRuoyjuico for after its addition addi-tion the milk soon hardens into hard cakes of India rubber all ready for transportation transporta-tion In other places it is solidified by evaporation of the liquid part in the sun and is then completely dried in kettles suspended sus-pended over a wood lire In the great warehouses of Manaos and Pare you may see enormous misses of dried caoutchouc say resembling cheeses awaiting shipment i ship-ment By the way the native word for India rubber caoutchouc sounds much like a sneeze and is pronounced as though spelled keechook with the accent strong on the nrst syllable The milky jUice which now plays so important a part among the worlds productions was first made use of by the Indians of Costa Rica and by them made known to their conquer ers Early as 1513 the Spaniards In Mexico had lectned to make it into shoes and also to usa it for waxing their cloaks in order to render them waterproof and no doubt that was the origin of the idea of its manufacture manu-facture into waterproof cloth and the modern mod-ern mackintosh FANNIE B W AIm |