THE MONTAÑA AND ITS PRODUCTS—THE RUBBER LANDS OF LORETO
[Illustration: INDIANS CARRYING COCA TO MARKET.]
The region of the Montaña lies chiefly in the Amazon plain, where the
rubber trees and hardwoods of commerce grow in abundance, though on its
western and southern border it extends to the slope of the Cordilleras,
covering a territory rich in agricultural production. The northern
provinces of Puno and Cuzco and the eastern provinces of Junín and
Huánuco, as well as the entire Departments of San Martin, Amazonas, and
Loreto, belong to the region of the Montaña. Much of this vast territory
has never been cultivated, and a great deal of it remains to be
explored. It is richer in natural resources than any other part of Peru,
and, with the exception of the lower wooded region of the rubber
country, where malaria and anemia prevail, the climate is healthful.
The Montaña really comprises two separate regions, the high woodlands of
the eastern Andean slopes and the level lands that stretch away from
their base to the northeastern boundary of the republic. The high
woodlands have a mild cool climate, similar to that of southern Europe,
and their altitude renders them free from the diseases usually prevalent
in a tropical country. This part of the Montaña is a veritable paradise,
luxuriant in vegetation and marvellously productive. The chief drawback
to its industrial development has hitherto been the difficulty of
transporting its products to market, owing to the lack of railway
facilities. Now that this obstacle is rapidly being removed, there is
every reason to expect a greatly increased development of the
agricultural wealth of the Montaña, which is an especially promising
field for immigration.
The natural resources of the Montaña include many plants, fruits, and
herbs not found in other countries. In the warm valleys and on the
eastern slopes of the Cordilleras, at an altitude of from two thousand
to five thousand feet above sea level, the coca plant grows in
abundance. It is a native of Peru and Bolivia and has not been
cultivated successfully in any other part of the world, except to a
small extent in Ecuador and Colombia. From this plant is manufactured
the well-known drug, cocaine, used so generally for medicinal and
surgical purposes. Its leaves are the Indian’s most cherished
consolation; he will perform wonderful feats of endurance if provided
with a small sack of these, which he chews as the Oriental does the
betel, mixing them with a kind of lime which greatly increases the
stimulating effect.
[Illustration: CANOEING ON THE HUALLAGA RIVER.]
The Peruvian Indian eats little and yet, by chewing coca leaves, he is
able to make long journeys on foot or to do hard work in the fields and
in the mines without fatigue. The effect of the excessive use of this
stimulant is very harmful, dulling the mental faculties and, in extreme
cases, causing paralysis. Used in moderation, it seems to produce no bad
effects, and has even been recommended for soldiers on the march, who
are exposed to fatigue and all kinds of weather. When taken as a hot
tea, coca excites perspiration; and it acts as a sedative in asthmatic
attacks. The leaves are used for cataplasms in relieving rheumatic
pains. The curative effects following the use of this drug are so
numerous that it is regarded by the Indians as a panacea for all ills.
When the Spaniards first arrived in Peru, they were unable to account
for the wonderful properties of the coca plant, and in superstitious
fear they prohibited its cultivation, believing it to be an instrument
of the devil.
The best locality for the growth of the coca plant is in warm valleys,
not more than five thousand feet above the sea, where the average
temperature is between fifty and eighty degrees Fahrenheit, and the land
is clayey, abundant in iron, and without the presence of salts of any
kind; the ground must be soft and loose, and is best on the hillside,
where the water of the rains is quickly carried off and does not leave
the soil too damp, though frequent rains are desirable to promote rapid
and leafy growth. The first harvest is gathered eighteen months after
planting, and great care is required in collecting the leaves, so that
the shrub may not be injured. Each leaf is picked separately and dropped
on a cloth, spread on the ground for the purpose, only the top leaves
being left on the plant to prevent its dying off. As a rule, three or
four crops are harvested every year, the most productive coca
plantations being in the Departments of Cuzco, Huánuco, Junín, and the
inter-Andean valleys of La Libertad. The province of Urubamba, in the
Department of Cuzco, is famous for the abundance and fine quality of its
coca, the plant growing here to a maximum height of about six feet. The
only coca plantations of importance on the coast slope of the
Cordilleras are those of the province of Yauyos, in the Department of
Lima.
A Peruvian scientist, Dr. Hipólito Unánue, was the first to make a
thorough study of the constituent properties of the coca leaf; and, in
1859, an Austrian chemist, Albert Niemann, extracted from coca leaves
the alkaloid known as cocaine, which is now manufactured in Peru, as
well as in other countries. A great deal of the coca produced on the
various plantations is consumed in the country, the average Indian
chewing from fifteen to twenty grammes daily. In the native factories,
each pound of leaves yields from three to four grammes of cocaine. The
exportation of coca leaves amounts annually to upwards of three million
pounds, and that of the manufactured product, cocaine, to about fifteen
thousand pounds. The leaves are employed, in Europe and the United
States, not only for the manufacture of cocaine, cocaidine, and other
alkaloids, but in the making of wines, tonics, and refreshing drinks of
various kinds.
[Illustration: SHIPYARD AT ASTILLERO, WHERE THE INCA MINING COMPANY’S
FIRST STEAMER WAS BUILT.]
Another product of the Peruvian Montaña, cacao, promises to be an
important source of revenue when the industry is better developed. The
cacao trees of Cuzco produce a chocolate of exceptional quality and a
delicious cocoa, the fruit being especially rich and possessing the
properties required in chocolate of the best taste and finest aroma. But
none of the Cuzco cacao ever gets into the foreign market, as it is all
consumed in Peru. The cacao tree grows spontaneously in many districts
of the Montaña, and requires little cultivation to make it yield in
abundance. Wherever cacao orchards have been planted, the results have
been eminently satisfactory, and every year sees an increase of cacao
plantations, chiefly in the region of Chanchamayo, in the province of
Jaen, Department of Cajamarca, and in the lower provinces of Amazonas
and San Martin. The future of the cacao industry is particularly
promising, and no other enterprise offers greater reward for the slight
labor invested, as the trees, once planted, continue to bear for a
hundred years, requiring no other labor than the gathering of the
harvest.
[Illustration: CHICAPLAYA, IN THE HEART OF THE MONTAÑA.]
The largest coffee plantations of Peru are cultivated in the region of
the Montaña, though the coffees of Pacasmayo, on the coast, and of
Choquisongo, in the sierra, are of excellent quality. Carabaya, in the
Department of Puno, produces some of the best coffee known, the Carabaya
bean being particularly rich in caffeine. Chanchamayo is also an
important coffee-producing centre, more than five million trees growing
on the haciendas of this district, in the province of Tarma, Department
of Junín. In one colony alone are thirty-five coffee plantations,
covering seventeen hundred acres, on which two million trees are
cultivated. The plantations are being improved every year, and there is,
apparently, no reason why Peru should not be among the leading
coffee-growing countries of the world. At present, a little more than a
thousand tons are exported annually, after the home market is supplied,
as Peru imports no coffee of any kind.
All the agricultural products that flourish on the coast, and many of
those that are cultivated on the sierra, may be grown with success in
the Montaña. Sugar, rice, tobacco, maize, and even wheat, barley, and
potatoes, thrive in some of the provinces of Cuzco, Junín, and other
interior departments. Tobacco is grown in all the provinces of the
Montaña, including those of the Department of Loreto, which lies almost
entirely in the Amazon plain. The cultivation of tobacco is carried on
in the most primitive fashion, and the plantations do not yield what
they are capable of producing under more scientific methods.
[Illustration: CHUNCHO INDIANS OF THE PENEDO VALLEY.]
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 trunk is of
cylindrical shape, often measuring six or seven feet in diameter near
the base. The quality of the latex is known by its color, the best being
of a violet grey hue while the inferior latex is much lighter. The
rubber trees grow sometimes in groups of eight or ten together, and
again singly, at intervals of from sixty to two hundred feet apart. A
_jebe_ property is usually defined by _estradas_, or paths, leading past
a number of rubber trees, the average _estrada_ embracing an area of a
hundred acres, more or less, in which are from a hundred to a hundred
and fifty trees, yielding rubber. One man is usually employed on each
_estrada_, and his day’s work consists in tapping the trees in the early
morning by notching a place with a hatchet and fixing in it a _tichela_,
or little tin cup, to receive the latex, as it oozes out of the cut.
When he has made his round, he returns to collect the latex, emptying
the contents of the _tichela_ into a pail, which he carries to his camp
to be smoked in preparation for its shipment. The process of “smoking,”
or coagulation, consists in twirling the latex around a ladle that is
held over the smoke of burning wood, the hard wood known as vegetable
marble being best suited to this purpose. The _seringuero_, as this
class of rubber gatherer is called, collects upward of twenty-five
pounds of rubber a year from each tree in the forests of Loreto,
northern Cuzco and the region of the Madre de Dios.
[Illustration: MASISEA, THE FIRST WIRELESS TELEGRAPH STATION BUILT
BETWEEN PUERTO BERMUDEZ AND IQUITOS.]
Besides the _jebe_, or Pará rubber, the forests of the Montaña yield
great quantities of the variety called _caucho_, which is gathered in
regions where the heat and humidity are not so great as in the _seringa_
lands. The _cauchero_ works on a plan different from that of the
_seringuero_; if he is collecting _caucho_ in _planchas_, or slabs, he
fells the tree near a hole made for the purpose of receiving the latex
as it flows, and then he mixes this fluid with common soap, or an
infusion of vetilla, to bring about coagulation; if he wishes to extract
the _sernambi de caucho_, which is of greater value than the _plancha_,
his method is to bleed the tree by cutting deep gashes in it with his
_machete_, or hatchet, and leaving the milk to flow in little canals,
artificially prepared to conduct the latex, which becomes coagulated on
exposure to the air and forms ribbons of rubber, that are rolled into
balls and shipped in this form. Each tree furnishes, on an average,
about fifty pounds of _caucho_. A moderate duty is levied on the
exportation of all rubber, _jebe_ paying a cent and a half, gold, a
pound, and _caucho_ a cent a pound; this rate is only about one-fifth of
the export duty charged in Brazil, and one-half that in Bolivia.
[Illustration: A TURBULENT TRIBUTARY OF THE MADRE DE DIOS RIVER.]
Foreign enterprise has done a great deal in developing the rubber
industry in Peru, the government making liberal concessions to those who
purchase rubber lands for exploitation. Tracts of virgin woodland in the
Montaña are sold at the rate of a dollar an acre, and grants are made
under liberal conditions; a number of acres of land, supposed to contain
rubber trees, or a number of _estradas_, may be rented by paying one
dollar for every hundred pounds of rubber extracted, the destruction of
the trees being forbidden. The Inca Rubber Company is one of the most
important foreign enterprises in the Montaña. This company was the
outgrowth of a concession granted by the Peruvian government to Chester
W. Brown, of the Inca Mining Company, for certain lands located in the
Montaña, in the Department of Puno. The government ceded to the company
eight thousand acres of land for every mile of road opened to public
traffic between the Santo Domingo mine and the Madre de Dios River, or a
navigable point on the Tambopata, the road to be approximately seven
feet wide, with a maximum grade of ten per cent and to afford all the
conditions necessary for the safe and comfortable transportation of
passengers and freight. Not only has the road been completed through the
rich rubber lands between the Inambari and Tambopata Rivers to the head
of navigation at Astillero station, but a steamer, the _Inca_, has been
built to connect this port with Riberalta and, by means of the San
Antonio railway—now under construction in accordance with the Acre
treaty between Bolivia and Brazil—with the Madeira and Amazon to the
Atlantic Ocean. The completion of the Inca Rubber Company’s road ensures
an outlet to the Atlantic by a short route from the Pacific, as the
Southern railway connects the Pacific port of Mollendo with the station
of Tirapata, whence the road is built to Santo Domingo, Puerto Candamo,
and Astillero. From Tirapata to Astillero, the distance is two hundred
and eighty miles through a rich rubber country. Over this long distance,
the steamer _Inca_ was brought in pieces, carried on the backs of
Indians, to the company’s shipyard, for which the port is named,
“Astillero” meaning “shipyard.” Here it was built and launched on the
Tambopata. A telephone connects Astillero with Santo Domingo and
Tirapata, and electricity is used in lighting the town. Explorations
have been made in this region by Mr. Brown and Professor Baily, of
Harvard University, and the Wilson River was discovered by an explorer
sent out at the Inca Rubber Company’s expense.
[Illustration: A RUBBER CAMP IN THE MONTAÑA.]
[Illustration: RAPIDS ON THE TAMBOPATA RIVER.]
[Illustration: A TYPICAL SCENE ON THE WATERWAYS OF THE UPPER AMAZON.]
The success of the Inca Rubber Company has attracted other investors to
the Montaña, and, within the past two years, several similar enterprises
have been inaugurated. The Inambari Pará Rubber States Company, Limited,
was formed a year ago with a capital of three hundred and fifty thousand
pounds, to exploit the rubber of the province of Carabaya; the
Paucartambo Rubber Company, Limited, has started an enterprise in the
Madre de Dios region; the Compañia Gomera Alto Marañon recently began
the development of the rubber industry in the Department of Amazonas,
and the Sociedad Madre de Dios has begun to work the forests of the
eastern rubber district. With the increased output of rubber promised by
the successful exploitation of these properties, the annual revenue
derived from this source will undoubtedly show rapid gain. The financial
crisis which affected the North American market in 1907 was severely
felt in the rubber trade of the Amazon region, the shipments of this
product being cut down to an alarmingly low quantity. The new
enterprises felt the disastrous conditions most keenly, though all the
rubber establishments of the Amazon country suffered greatly. The loss
was heavy also to those merchants who depend on the success of the
rubber trade for their prosperity. In Iquitos, as well as in the ports
of the lower Amazon, the whole business atmosphere was pervaded with
gloom for a time; though it was understood that the depression could
only be temporary, as the demand for rubber is constantly increasing,
and the purposes for which it may be employed appear to be of an almost
unlimited variety. A passing money crisis is not sufficient to imperil
the interests of a trade which is of world wide importance; and the
steamers and launches of the Amazon tributaries are already as busy as
ever fulfilling the requirements of the rubber shippers in this vast
region. The exports of rubber now amount annually to thousands of tons,
valued at upward of five million dollars, nearly all of which passes
through the ports of Mollendo and Iquitos, the latter the capital of the
great rubber-producing territory of Loreto.
[Illustration: SCENE ON THE MADRE DE DIOS RIVER NEAR MALDONADO.]