During the time the trees are growing big enough to be tapped, the principal work on a rubber plantation consists of weeding, manuring, and pruning.

The staff consists of a manager, generally spoken of as the planter, two, three, or half a dozen assistants, according to the size of the estate, and a number of natives, called “coolies.” The planter, a white man, has his own bungalow. On the big estates such bungalows are large, well-built, convenient residences, of country-seat rank. If the planter is married, his wife probably lives with him. His business may have brought him to a lonely spot, where at present there may be only a poor sort of bungalow to serve as the manager’s quarters, but his wife has chosen to rough it with him, rather than say “Good-bye.” And there may be some little English girls and boys to welcome Daddy Planter when he comes in from his work of looking after many things and many people; for, as a rule, white children thrive in the tropics until they are seven or eight years old, and then, when the sad time of parting does come, they are sent “home” to England not only for the sake of their health, but in order that they may have the advantage of going to a good school. The assistants on a plantation are usually white men; in Malaya and Ceylon, almost all of them are English. They chum together in a bungalow. The labourers are coloured men, women, and children, in all shades of yellow and brown; their quarters are called “coolie lines,” and are long buildings of the bungalow type, which are partitioned off into family residences.

Many of the rubber estates, especially here in Malaya, seem to be so isolated that we are tempted to compare them with a seringal in their loneliness. In reality, no plantation, even though it be in the heart of the Bush, is isolated in the strict sense of the word. Somewhere, not very far away, there is a good road leading to some centre of civilization that can be reached in a few hours, maybe an hour or two by motor. Many of the planters keep a car, and “What’s mine is yours” is the popular way of looking upon possessions. Both in Ceylon and Malaya there are many little towns scattered throughout the rubber districts, and in most of them an English Club is an important feature of the place. In both countries, too, any planter can get to a railway station without much difficulty or loss of time; and there are good day and night trains to take him to the capital, or to one of the few big towns.

With regard to the cultivation side of plantation work, the chief matter on which the planters differ is the business of weeding. Some of them are certain in their own minds that rubber-trees grow best when the ground is quite clear of weeds. Some maintain that perfectly clean weeding is a waste of time and money; they believe in having a clean circle of ground round each tree, and keeping the weeds down on the rest of the land by putting in some variety of dwarf spreading plant. Those who favour this latter plan talk of the manuring properties of such plants, and of the good they do by harbouring moisture. Planters in favour of clean weeding say such plants keep light and air from the ground, and that they are not good food for the soil. At the various Botanic Gardens, especially in Ceylon, Malaya, and Java, many scientists are devoting much time to the study of rubber cultivation and preparation, and this question as to the best method of weeding is receiving a great deal of attention.

Whilst we have been talking, we have been making our way to one of the oldest and finest rubber estates in the East. It is known as “Linggi Plantations”; and is situated in the Federated Malay States, in the neighbourhood of Kuala Lumpur, the chief up-country town of Malaya, and close to Port Swettenham, the busy, up-country port which, during the last few years, has been raised by the rubber industry to a position of great importance on the Suez-Far East trading route.

“Linggi” consists of so many large plantations and up-to-date workshops that in a whole day we can only get the merest peep at the estate. We begin sight-seeing about six in the morning, just as the sun is rising, by going into one block of one plantation to see the tappers at work. We are in the midst of a carefully cultivated wood of Heveas; all around us stand a dignified army of straight, tall trunks; high overhead stretches a thick canopy of leaves. For a few moments, the landscape strikes us as being a rather sombre picture in browns and greens, and we cannot see a single human being anywhere in the scene. Presently the dawnbeams discover numerous chinks in the canopy, and come streaming through the leaves, here, there, and everywhere; the ground is bronzed, the trunks are gilded, the treetops are illuminated with quaintly shaped patches of rosy light. Then, suddenly the scene becomes a blaze of colour; strolling leisurely across the horizon come a crowd of figures, all of whom are undoubtedly wearing some bit of clothing that is bright red, green, blue, or yellow.

These people are a gang of tappers, who are going to make their daily round of certain trees from which it is their duty to collect milk. They disperse in various directions, some making straight for trees that are close by where we are standing. As we get a nearer view of the labourers, we are better able to study their picturesque attire. Some of the men are wearing nothing but a cloth round their loins, and a handkerchief, knotted into a turban, on their heads. Many of the male folk look like women; they have long hair, which is twisted at the neck into a “bun,” and their nether garment is a piece of cotton material which is hung round the waist skirt-fashion. The women’s costumes are evidently made as they dress themselves. They are clad in draperies, which hang in graceful folds. Very large earrings, nose-rings, numbers of bangles that reach half-way up the arms, and bangles round the ankles are striking features of their attire.

Most of these labourers are Tamils from India. A large proportion of the coolies employed on the rubber estates of Ceylon and Malaya consists of Tamils. In Ceylon, some of the labourers are Cingalese; in Malaya, the rubber estate coolies include a few Malays, some Javanese, and a number of Chinese. In both countries it is very difficult for the planters to get as much labour as they require, in spite of the large immigrant population, and in order to make an estate pay, the man at the head of affairs, and all his assistants, must be so skilful at managing the natives that this particular estate is never the one to be short of hands.

Following a tapper on his round in a plantation is a very easy expedition compared with that journey we took with a seringueiro to see him get his morning’s milk. The plantation tapper is surrounded by rubber-trees, they are never very far apart, and even when, for some reason or other, he has to pass one by without operating on it, the distance from his last stopping-place to his next is quite short. As a rule, only trees that measure at least 18 inches round at 3 feet from the ground are tapped, but some trees, even though they belong to the grown-ups, have to be missed out for a time because they are doing a rest cure. Most of the trees in a grown-up section are, however, tapped daily, or on alternate days, for the greater part of the year, but the circumference of the trunk is so portioned off for operations that no part is retapped until old wounds have completely healed. Yet it is seldom that a tree is tapped at a higher distance than can be conveniently reached from the ground. The amount of milk yielded by a tree depends partly on its age, and partly on the state of its health. If a tree gives enough milk to make about 3/4 pound of rubber the first year it is tapped, it is considered a good specimen. As it grows older, the yield should steadily increase. During 1909, one of the finest old Hevea trees in Ceylon, aged thirty-three, gave 15 gallons of milk, which contained 76 pounds of rubber.

At random we choose which coolie we will accompany on his round, and as we dog his footsteps we see a great deal of the outdoor life on a rubber plantation. At first, all our attention is taken up by watching how the one tapper does his work. The trees he visits already bear a herringbone, or half herringbone, design on the lower part of the trunk; but it consists of alternate strips of almost bared wood and of bark, slanting down into the central line. With a tool something like a chisel, the coolie takes a shaving off each strip of bark, whereupon milk oozes out from the cuts, makes for the central channel, and trickles down into an enamel cup that awaits it at the base of the trunk.

Presently we are joined by another onlooker. Although he looks very much like a coolie, he is far and away the superior of the working-class mass. He is a “kangany,” an enterprising native who serves the planter in the double rÔle of recruiting-sergeant and overseer. He makes periodical journeys to India to arrange for new batches of Tamils to emigrate to the rubber-growing districts; he brings his recruits to the particular district which is his headquarters, and sees them settled on this estate or that; and until he is again wanted to go off recruiting, he joins the staff of some plantation, and takes up the duties of teaching the new hands their work, and of seeing that a certain gang of the old ones are kept up to the mark.

Evidently the kangany overseers cannot be wholly relied on as teachers. For the one over yonder, who is showing a little Tamil girl how to tap a rubber-tree, has a white man standing by his side and superintending the lesson.

By about eleven o’clock most of the trees are ceasing for this day to yield milk. The coolies now make their rounds again for the purpose of collecting the day’s supply. The contents of the little cups are poured into pails and cans, which, as they are filled, are taken to the factory. Some of the carriers balance their load on their head, others hang a vessel at either end of a pole, scale-fashion, and balance the burden on one shoulder.