Edith A. Browne

“ In this way is all wonder being banished from the earth by the civilization you’re so pleased to call wise. But I’m not here to preach to you. Come, I will take you to a country where everything is yet as Dame Nature made it. It is a country full of possibilities, abounding in natural wonders whose discovery may create many and many a mighty change in the everyday life of the world at large. ”

“ We have seen how the plantation rubber industry was developed through a sound belief that the world’s demand for rubber would exceed forest supplies. So great has been the development, that to-day some people are prophesying all manner of catastrophes on the ground that the supply will soon be exceeding the demand. On the other hand, there are the optimists, who are well in the majority; they have their reasons for looking on the bright side, and from what we know of the rubber industry we find ourselves strongly in sympathy with their arguments. ”

“ This is the abode of strange forms of life, strangely plumaged birds, and elfish little ti-ti monkeys, which never descend to the dark soil throughout their lives, but swing and gambol in the aërial gardens of dainty forms and sweet-smelling orchids, for every great tree supports an infinite variety of plant life. ”

“ For my part, as the fine ship sped on her way with my prospective Hevea so far safe aboard, slung up fore and aft in their crates in the roomy, empty forehold, I became more and more exercised and concerned with a new anxiety, so as not much to heed Murray’s grumpiness. We were bound to call in at the city of Para, as the port of entry, in order to obtain clearance for the ship before we could go to sea. ”

“ 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. ”

“ For, in a bird’s-eye view, all the features of a landscape are seen in proportion; and as we look from aloft at this country we have come to visit, the outstanding feature is a wilderness which Nature designed as a citadel wherein she could reign supreme, and which, since the days of the Great Beginning of all things, she has fortified against any human desire to interfere with her own imagination and power of achievement. ”

“ You civilized mortals have yet so many lands to discover, so much to learn from the folk who dwell therein. I could take you to many a strange country where you would see the mere savage turning the simplest of Nature’s gifts to marvellous account. Some day more extraordinary uses will be found for these same things by the only kind of people you think clever. ”

“ Came the day when motor-cars got so far beyond being a fashionable craze that people began to realize they would soon be a necessary means of locomotion in this age when everyone is in such a hurry. Rubber tyres were going to be so much used in the near future, said someone to somebody else, that it looked as if we should want more rubber than was being supplied from the forests. ”

“ The scenery, you find, is so wildly beautiful that words cannot possibly do it justice, much less exaggerate its delights; in spite of the coming of the European, and the annual invasion by hundreds of rubber-gatherers, few changes have been made in the name of Progress within these forests; so in the days before the white man knew of their existence they must have looked very much the same as they do now. ”

“ Multitudes of giant trees burst the bonds of thickly tangled undergrowth, only to be fettered again up to their very summits, a hundred feet or more above our heads, by the endless twistings and turnings of gnarled vines and stout-stemmed creepers. ”

“ Among the few who profited in the long-run were men who had pinned their faith to plantation rubber long before the Boom. Some of them had brought the rubber plantations into existence, had worked hard at clearing jungle and planting rubber-trees, had struggled to pay their way whilst they brought up those trees to producing stage, in the days when the public would not have risked a penny on any such hazardous venture as rubber-growing, even if they had been wide awake enough to know that a few enthusiasts and a few hard-up planters were trying to establish this new branch of agriculture. ”

“ Newspapers were warning them of the risks they were running; rumours were abroad that certain shares were not worth a penny, since they represented partnership rights in land which had not been cleared of jungle, let alone planted up with a single rubber-tree; hints were going round that the rubber-trees on some of the genuine plantations were being overtapped in order that for the moment big profits should be made at any cost, to compare well with the present high price of shares. People saw themselves losing heavily, sooner or later, if their shares were left on their hands. ”

“ After a very few minutes we feel that not for another moment shall we be able to breathe in such an atmosphere. On the ground floor beneath us a big fire is consuming cocoanut shells, and belching forth clouds of smoke. We cannot actually see the smoke, but, like all the rubber around us, we are getting the full “benefit” of it as it finds its way through a double ceiling of perforated zinc. ”

“ It is not at all likely that the natives of Brazil had received any help from the natives of Haïti or Mexico in the matter of discovering that tree and the peculiar value of its sap. For the aborigines of Southern America are not given to wandering off to foreign lands either on business or pleasure, and even in these days it is only the very enthusiastic traveller or the man whose living depends on the rubber industry who undertakes a journey into the interior of Brazil, where, for the most part, the means of communication are still very primitive. ”

“ The fact that some people thought they stood to make money by a judicious purchase of shares in certain estates, about the working of which they had some knowledge, was now quite sufficient to persuade people who had never given a moment’s serious attention either to the industry in particular or to speculation in general that they could quickly make a fortune by investing in any so-called Rubber Company. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As we start off along a track that has little or no more claim to be called a path than had the Indian trail in my story, I point out to you a specimen of the rubber-yielding tree that is a native of these forests. Very soon you notice for yourselves that there are numbers of these trees in the district. Were you a son of these wilds, wholly dependent on your surroundings for anything and everything in the way of supplies, would you not try to find out whether this tree cannot be made to provide you with something to eat or drink or play with? ”

“ But the quality of African rubber is much inferior to that of Para, the rubber that sets the standard by which all other varieties must expect to be judged. The inferiority of African rubber is partly due to the milk from which it is made, but is largely the result of the way in which the milk is collected and coagulated. The work is all done by natives, men and women, whose one idea is to get as much rubber as possible in the easiest way. They are not at all careful to keep the milk free from dirt and impurities, and there is no science in their method of coagulating it. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But a few years later both the experts and the public began to realize that, for the first time in its triumphant career, wild Para had a really fearsome rival. This adversary is commonly known as Plantation Rubber; as a matter of fact, it is Cultivated Para, which has made such a determined fight for supremacy in the raw rubber market. This is indeed a case of child rising up against parent, for the Cultivated Para is all being obtained from trees that owe their existence to seeds taken from the Brazilian forests. The struggle has brought about a revolution in the Rubber World ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Knowing the form in which rubber goes into the manufacturer’s possession, and a few, at any rate, of the many forms in which it next makes a public appearance, we are naturally very anxious to learn how such transformations take place. It is impossible for me to take you over a rubber goods factory, much as I should like to do so. All such establishments keep very strictly to the rule of “No admittance except on business.” There are secrets to be hidden, not from the public, but from a rival manufacturer. ”

“ Just as no one can deny that the discovery of rubber has brought about a great revolution in the industrial world, so no one who knows the whole history of that revolution can dispute the fact that it was the discovery of Brazilian rubber which has been far and away the most powerful agent in effecting it. And although history does not give me a cut-and-dried date to support my belief that the aborigines of Brazil12 collected rubber sap, and made use thereof as early as, or even earlier than, did the natives of Haïti and Mexico, it supplies me with facts which uphold this theory. ”

“ Under ordinary conditions, people buy shares with a view to holding them, and receiving a proportion of the profits made by the enterprise in which they have taken a partnership. During the Rubber Boom, no one bought shares with this idea. The game, as I have told you, was to buy at to-day’s price, utterly regardless of whether it was a fancy figure, and trust to luck that very soon there would be some other people so anxious to get the shares that they would be willing to give a much bigger price for them. ”

“ We want to see for ourselves the way the present-day rubber-gatherers in Brazil do their work, and the kind of life they lead. So we have made a long journey by boat up one of the tributaries of the River Amazon to the landing-stage for a typical rubber-gatherers’ village.
We step ashore straight into the forest, and are warmly welcomed by a group of working men, who inquire eagerly for the latest news from anywhere,18 about anything. For days we have been travelling in a region that is far removed from the busy haunts of man, and we have grown quite used to the solitude of the wilds ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Amazon country furnishes a rubber that is quite distinct from the Para material. It is called “Caucho,” and is obtained from a tree known as the Castilloa Ulei. The biggest exporters are Peru and Bolivia.
There is no system of estradas to simplify the work of the caucho-gatherers. A search-party, largely composed of Indians, sets out to hunt for castilloa trees in parts of the forest that have never before been explored. There is not so much as a track to help them on their journey, nor a clue of any kind to tell them in which direction to cut their way. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Here, you will surely ask what explanation I have to offer for selecting Brazil as the home of the great discovery—why not Haiti, since the first mention of rubber in history is connected with this island? Or why not Mexico, since the natives of this country are also credited by history with being amongst the earliest folk to make themselves acquainted with the uses of rubber? ”

“ Grassland is sometimes used for rubber-growing. Paths are cleared and the rubber is planted in rows, between strips of grass; or the whole of a given area is completely cleared before planting is begun. The most common grass, called lalang, is the worst pest with which many of the planters have to contend. It is difficult to uproot, and any that may be left in the ground spreads very rapidly.
In Malaya the work of clearing is nearly all done by Sakai and Malays.
The Sakai are the aborigines of the country, who live in the jungle. They are very skilful woodcutters. ”