A rubber-gatherer in the Amazon region is called a “seringueiro.” On his daily round he has to follow a narrow path, called an “estrada,” that has been cut through the forest as a means of communication from one scattered rubber-tree to another.

As I should like you to understand exactly how these estradas are planned, I want you to imagine, for the moment, that you are standing somewhere near the river in a tract of unexplored forest. From this spot as starting-point you set out in any direction you like to hunt for rubber-trees. However excited you may be, you cannot possibly hurry, as the only path at your service is the one you are making for yourself. You cut a narrow strip, the length of your arm’s reach, out of the dense undergrowth, walk on a few paces, and are again brought to a standstill; not another step can you move forward until you have continued the path by cutting away another strip out of the tangle ahead.

You know you are in a district where Hevea rubber-trees flourish, but you have to take your chance of finding them among the many kinds of trees that are crowded together in the forest. When once you have settled the general direction in which you will explore, you go straight ahead, for you are just as likely to find what you want in a direct line as you would be if you let the fancy of every few minutes lead you into clearing a more irregular, and therefore longer, path. Of course, if you spot a rubber-tree a little way to the right or to the left, you bend your path round to meet it. When you have linked up about fifty Heveas, you curve your path so as to turn your face to the starting-point, and make your way back there, locating rubber-trees as you go along in the same way as on the outward journey; so by the time you get back to the spot you set out from, you have cut an estrada that is roughly elliptical in shape, and you have linked up from 100 to 120 Heveas. They are fine, sturdy old trees, too, for the most part. Some are 60, 70, or even 80 feet high, and their circumference is anything from 3 to 12 feet in the lower regions.

When you have made one estrada, you can set out in a different direction from the same starting-point and clear another. Again and again you can repeat the same method of exploration, and you can loop up side estradas with the main ones. To complete your preparations for obtaining rubber, you must build a hut near the spot where all the main paths start and meet again, and arrange for labourers to come and take up their abode in it and work for you.

To-day we are not going to cut estradas. We have come to a part of the forest which is already looped with several such paths, and we are now standing outside the hut where live the seringueiros who work them. The time is about five in the morning, but, early as it is, the labourers are getting ready for the business of the day; they are now collecting their tools, and hurriedly swallowing the coffee they put to boil whilst they were slipping into their few clothes.

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. Page47

From a photograph in the British Guiana Section of the Imperial Institute, by permission