THE ROMANCE OF RUBBER--_continued_
Our leader seems to be pursuing a haphazard course as we shadow him
about the forest. Nevertheless, it is not many months ago since he
wandered this same way, and only a few weeks have gone by since a
little party of the tribe rebeat with their footsteps this path, which
was originally designed and cleared by remote ancestors as a cut to
a good fishing stream. But fresh vegetation springs up with mushroom
growth in this land of tropical luxuriance, and to-day the trail has
been wellnigh hidden from view by a new tangle of undergrowth. There is
no fear, however, of our leader losing himself in the maze; he has the
tribal instinct for finding his way through the forest; the scenery,
which seems to us so hopelessly bewildering, reveals to his trained eye
many a signpost, and the thickest covering of shrubs, creepers, fallen
leaves, broken branches, and storm-strewn trees cannot lead him astray
from a path which he has roamed again and again ever since he was quite
a little boy. Although he seems to be forcing a passage at random, he
is following a trail which is as familiar to him as are the highways
and byways of our native town to us, and sooner or later, according
as the fancy takes him to go the long way round, or turn aside into a
short cut, he will get back to the camp.
Whatever may have been his purpose when he started out on his
wanderings, clearly his chief desire now is to find trees of the same
kind as that from which he obtained the strange material that he has
made into a ball. Sometimes he comes upon two or three within a hundred
yards or so of each other; sometimes he has to walk a good mile from
his last find before he espies another of the forest giants for which
he is seeking.
After a few hours’ diligent search, he walks ahead without stopping to
test the sap of any more trees, and at length we realize that during
the last hour he has been making straight for the camp. The moment he
arrives here he shows his quaint toy to his fellows. The tribe are all
very interested in it, very delighted with it, and it is tossed from
hand to hand. The chief questions him, and there follows a conclave,
at which it is decided that a party shall set forth on the morrow to
collect more of the newly discovered material.
At dawn we leave the camp clearing, and once more plunge into the thick
of the bush. With what a novel procession we join company and once
more strike the trail! Evidently it is not the custom to wear clothes
in this part of the world, but personal ornaments seem to be in high
favour. Nearly everyone is bedecked with some “pretty” knick-knack,
such as a necklet of tiger’s teeth, a jingling girdle of seeds, or a
plaited-fibre armlet; and the majority seem to make “pincushions” of
their chin and lips--the fishbones you see sticking out therefrom are
pegs on which they hang decorations of feathers and seeds when they
are merrymaking.
From the way these primitive folk set about getting a supply of
the newly discovered product, we soon realize that they have more
intelligence than we had previously given the savage credit for
possessing; for when the discoverer points out to his companions a
specimen of the tree which yields the desired gum, a member of the
party proceeds to carry out an experiment that would seem to be of both
a practical and imaginative nature. A hole is scratched in the ground
at the base of the tree, and a few inches above, in a straight line
with this, several notches are hacked in the trunk. The sap, which
immediately begins to ooze out, trickles down into the hollow beneath.
You see at once that a more wholesale method of collecting has been
devised than that of catching driblets of the sap by hand. But in the
plan which is now being tried there lurks still more intelligence,
inspiration, reason, instinct, or whatever you like to call it. For
at the conclave in the camp, general opinion favoured the idea that
heat was the agent which transformed the liquid into a solid. And if
the warmth of a man’s hand could bring about such a remarkable change,
surely, it is argued, the heat of the sun would more readily have the
same effect. So the sap is now to be left in the collecting hole, where
it will come under the influence of baking hot tropical earth and
thirsty tropical air.
Sap is still issuing from the wounded trunk when the party go off in
search of other specimens of the tree. After a few hours, we find that
they have been steering a course which brings them back to the first
tree on which they operated. No wonder they are all so pleased when
they arrive at this goal, for they can see at a glance that their
experiment has proved successful. True, the sap has now ceased to
flow, but it is more than likely that some fresh wounds would produce
a further supply. And sufficient for the moment is the joy of finding
in the hole beneath the tree a big lump of solid something, like the
material of the toy which their guide made yesterday. It is scooped out
of its semicircular mould, is found to be still soft enough to work,
and is quickly rounded by hand into the form of a ball.
* * * * *
Many years have passed since this new kind of gum was discovered;
but we are still living in the days of Once Upon a Time when we pay
our second visit to the country where flourishes the tree of supply.
In the interval since our first visit, the aborigines have had no
communication with the civilized world. Yet they have contrived to
make their new material serve more purposes than the original one
of providing them with playthings. They have found out that it is
waterproof, so they now smear it over pouches for holding treasures
which they want to protect against a tropical downpour. And see the
mere savage discovering a new use for this product which is destined to
put the whole civilized world under a debt of gratitude to him. He rubs
a thick coating of the sap over his feet--and lo and behold! when it
has dried and he wriggles his feet free, he is the proud possessor of
the first pair of galoshes ever made.