Hevea brasiliensis

“ Upwards of one hundred rubber-bearing trees, vines and shrubs have been classified; but the one known as the Hevea is the rubber tree par excellence of Brazil. It is indigenous [184] to the Amazon and its tributaries. Trees are oftentimes found which are as much as twelve feet in circumference, but those are exceptional. They require an abundance of moisture, and it is only in the thick forest, where the necessary moisture is constant and abundant, that they will reach this extraordinary size, although the trees can be successfully cultivated. ”

“ If Brazil had known what a certain ship which left the country in the early part of 1876 was carrying, and if she had guessed what a revolution in the rubber world its cargo was destined to bring about, there is little doubt but that she would have seen to it that no Hevea seeds ever went to foreign lands. ”

“ The sufferers in South America were generally men who led isolated lives in the vast forests of the Amazons, gathering the sap of the hevea braziliensis, and living for long periods on bad food. Victims of this type of beri-beri generally live for nine months, and those of strong constitution and in whom the swelling had not risen above the knees recovered. If the patient lives the old life and continues the old diet in the forest, the disease gradually ascends until it gets above the knees, and then its course becomes very rapid until it reaches the heart. ”

“ It is known that as early as 1880, some Hevea trees were in flower at Perak, a mid-region of the Malay Peninsula, and that in 1881 some of those in the Botanic Gardens at Singapore, in the south of the Peninsula, bore fruit. These trees may have been reared from Kew seedlings; or they may have been grown from cuttings of the young trees at Peradeniya, sent over to Singapore in 1877; or, again, they may have been transplanted one-year-olds from Ceylon. In any case, Heveas in the Malay Peninsula were yielding seed as early as their near relatives in Ceylon. ”

“ The Hevea product is obtained annually by tapping the trees and coagulating the sap over a smoky fire, but the caucho is procured by felling the tree and collecting the sap in a hollow in the ground where it is coagulated by stirring in a mixture of soa and the juice of a plant called vetilla. ”

“ The rubber-producing Hevea guayanensis is found in abundance on the Amazon tributaries, and the Castilloa elastica is common to all the Caribbean river valleys. Southern Colombia, especially the eastern slopes of the Andes, produces another valuable tree, the Cinchona calisaya, from the bark of which quinine is made. ”

“ Back in the seventies an English botanist, Wickham by name, smuggled many Hevea seeds out of Brazil. The tree was found to grow well in the Eastern tropics and today the rubber plantations of Ceylon, Borneo, the Malay Peninsula and neighboring regions are producing more than half of the world’s supply of crude rubber. Here the natives work under pleasant climatic conditions and the trees under cultivation grow better and yield better than in the forest. ”

“ When the seeds are ready to drop the outer covering of the pod bursts with a loud report, the seeds shooting in all directions.
This is Nature's clever scheme to spread the Hevea family. The tree grows wild in the hot, damp forests of the Amazon valley and in other parts of South America that have a similar climate. The ideal climate for the rubber tree is one which is uniform all the year round, from eighty-nine to ninety-four degrees at noon, and riot lower than seventy degrees at night. ”

“ As in all the forests, the palms formed the most conspicuous feature of the undergrowth. Ferns and liverworts were more abundant than in the forests near Paramaribo, and at the base of some of the trees a small Trichomanes was not uncommon, the only Hymenophvllaceæ that were collected. An interesting tree of this forest was the "Balata," a species of Mimusops which yields rubber of fair quality, which is collected in considerable quantities by the natives. There also occurs a species of Hevea, which, however, is much inferior in its product to the Para rubber tree. ”

“ Two thousand nurslings were thus transplanted to the Spice Isle, lesser quantities going to Java, British Burma, Singapore and other points which appeared to offer the needed conditions for healthy growth. It was in Ceylon that the first young rubbers flowered in the year 1881; there is no earlier record of the blossoming of heveas outside their habitat in the Amazonian valleys. ”

“ It was used for years, before the days of vulcanization, mostly for lead-pencil erasers. Thousands of acres of it in India were recently destroyed to make room for Hevea, although it still produces a respectable amount of rubber, inferior, however, to Hevea and Castilla. In Mexico a new source of rubber is the guayule rubber plant, a small shrub native of the drier parts of the Mexican uplands. It does not produce latex, as practically all other rubber plants do, but particles of rubber are found directly in its tissues, mostly in the bark. ”

“ The true attraction from the first to Colombian or Peruvian caucheros was not so much the presence of the scattered Hevea braziliensis trees throughout this remote forest as the existence of fairly numerous tribes of docile, or at any rate of easily subdued, Indians. The largest gathering of these people was a tribe termed the Huitotos, a mild and inoffensive people subdivided into many sub-tribes or families, each dwelling apart from its neighbour, and ruled by its own hereditary cacique or capitán. ”

“ The demand became so great that a reckless and barbarous exploitation took place of the trees, the inspissated and dried sap of which is rubber, this tough resisting and elastic gum which renders such valuable services to man. In Borneo ten trees were felled for every kilogramme of gutta-percha. Now more prudent and sensible methods have been introduced. In Ceylon, Java, and the Malay Peninsula there are large plantations which make their owners rich men. In India the Brazilian tree (Hevea) is the most productive of all the rubber-yielding varieties. ”

“ The journey is said to surpass in beauty the better known ride from Santos to São Paulo, presenting a variety of natural scenery seldom found in so short a trip, along with rich semi-tropical vegetation, pine forests, and manifestations of industrial development. The State spends more in proportion upon education than does any other in Brazil. It possesses unlimited resources in cattle, agriculture, mines, and forests. The pine tree of Brazil, the Araucaria brasiliensis, especially prominent in this State, differs greatly in appearance from pines in the United States. ”

“ In this favoured land the solar heat proves scarcely less influential and salutary to animal than to vegetable life; and years of subsequent exhaustion can never entirely efface from the recollection of the European sojourner the buoyancy of spirit, unclouded mind, and exquisite appreciation of mere animal existence which marked the first years of his residence in Brazil. These vivid sensations may be in part determined by the novelty and splendour of a New World, its brilliant skies, perpetual verdure, and the variety, luxuriance, and beauty of its vegetable life ”

“ In the day time the sun is warm and pleasant; the air of that bracing kind which is calculated to raise the animal spirits, and give a tone and energy to the mind. The difference, too, in the people between this place and Brazil is remarkable:—strong, healthy-looking men, clear complexioned, bright-eyed women, many of whom have as much bloom on their cheeks as would become an English dairy-maid. ”

“ The Rubber is of both the caucho and the hevea varieties, the former of inferior quality, procured by cutting down the trees, the hevea or fine Pará by tapping. The former is obtained by the Tolimenses from the Rio Negro section, the latter by Indians of Vaupés, this being sent down to Manaos. Rubber also comes from Chocó, being collected by Indians and negroes who exchange it for goods at Quibdó, at places on the San Juan River, also at Barbacoas, back of Tumaco. ”

“ They hang from the highest branches like ropes of various sizes, some little larger than whipcord, others of the circumference of a large cable; indeed, they are often thicker than a man’s body, and frequently form spiral and intricate knots, like the writhings of gigantic serpents, à la Laocoon. The profuse variety of growth and rapid vegetation in this part of Brazil is scarcely credible to Europeans. ”

“ Its exports first in importance are cotton, and sugar, and then hides. With the exception of the Reconvavo of Bahia, there is probably no part of Brazil so populous as the greater part of this province, which, embracing an area of about 150 by 60 miles, has a population of fully a quarter of a million, chiefly addicted to agriculture, here prosecuted with great success, as the soil is most rich, yielding nearly every Brazilian produce in great profusion; but tobacco, once a prime staple, is falling off, owing to the cessation of imported slave labour ”

“ The most striking of these creepers is, perhaps, the liane, whose tendrils grow straight downwards to the ground, twisting themselves together in knots and bundles. Occasionally one sees, suspended from a tree, at a height of some fifty feet, a large lump of moss, from which scarlet orchids are growing; looking like an enormous hanging flower-basket. All colours in Brazil, whether of birds, insects, or flowers, are brilliant in the extreme. Blue, violet, orange, scarlet, and yellow are found in the richest profusion, and no pale or faint tints are to be seen. ”

“ That the policy of the Brazilian Government with regard to her territories on the Amazon is in the right direction no one can deny, and it is in striking contrast with the proceedings of the ruler of Paraguay, who could, in the erection of his formidable strongholds, have had no other object in view than that of impeding, if he did not absolutely obstruct, the passage of the River Paraguay. Paraguayan advocates have, indeed, endeavoured to show that the opening of the Amazon by Brazil was solely dictated by self-interested motives, but let the world look at the facts and judge accordingly. ”

“ H. faber of Brazil is closely allied to the last species, but the skin of its upper parts is quite smooth. There is a small tarsal fold, and one extending from the upper eyelid to the shoulder. It is light brown above, with darker marks which form a conspicuous vertebral line, transverse bars on the hind-limbs, and a few irregular, scattered, vermicular or linear marks on the head and body. The adult, when put into a strong light, will rapidly turn pale; at night the longitudinal stripe on the back and the bars on the hind-limbs become very distinct ”

“ This abundant supply, being aided by that vast river-system peculiar to the eastern part of America, and being also accompanied by heat, has also stimulated the soil into an activity unequalled in any other part of the world. Brazil, which is nearly as large as the whole of Europe, is covered with a vegetation of incredible profusion. Indeed, so rank and luxuriant is the growth, that Nature seems to riot in the very wantonness of its power.... ”

“ In that immense division of the animal kingdom which embodies more than one thousand species, and is so numerous that the Brazilians pretend that Brazil belongs to the ants, not to men, competition amidst the members of the same nest, or the colony of nests, does not exist. ”

“ The most important industry of the lower Montaña is rubber-gathering, the forests of the vast Amazon plain abounding in these trees of ever-increasing commercial value. The jebe, or seringa, as it is called in Brazil, known abroad as Pará rubber, grows best in the low lands of Loreto, where the altitude does not exceed three hundred feet, and where abundant rains and an equatorial climate cause the warm humidity necessary to the production of the latex, or milk, of the rubber tree. The jebe grows to an average height of seventy-five feet, the leaves forming a tuft of green at the top ”

“ The difference of race between the inhabitants of Brazil and the River Plate is very remarkable, indicating at once the great change in climate, and those other physiological influences that contribute to determine variety of character among people. At the same time it must be observed that South America furnishes many almost irreconcilable anomalies of this kind; for instance, a feeble and peaceful people dwelt on the cold mountains of Peru; a hardy and warlike race wandered under the burning sun of Brazil. ”

“ First, as to the Uruguay, touching which republic Brazil is assumed by ill-informed politicians in England to have sinister designs. Now, Brazil, of all countries, has most interest in the peace and progress of Uruguay as an independent state. But it must not be overlooked that Brazil is a Platine state, just as much as Uruguay, as the Argentine Confederation, as Bolivia, or Paraguay. It is in Brazilian territories that the River Paraguay has its main source, that the River Uruguay rises, that the Parana begins to flow, and that these (with their tributaries) form the River Plate. ”

“ Antonio is a long low island, called Itaparicá, between which and the port is the channel for large vessels. The scenery near Bahia does not present the striking features that distinguish Rio de Janeiro; it has neither the well-wooded hills nor the lofty precipitous rocks that environ the capital of Brazil. It is, however, very pretty, varied by small hills and acclivities, and ornamented by the tall, graceful cocoa-nut and the usual luxuriant vegetation of Brazil. The Cape, like the coast generally of the province of Bahia, is surrounded by coral rocks ”