WE GO WITH A SERINGUEIRO ON HIS ROUND
A rubber-gatherer in the Amazon region is called a “seringueiro.” On
his daily round he has to follow a narrow path, called an “estrada,”
that has been cut through the forest as a means of communication from
one scattered rubber-tree to another.
As I should like you to understand exactly how these estradas are
planned, I want you to imagine, for the moment, that you are standing
somewhere near the river in a tract of unexplored forest. From this
spot as starting-point you set out in any direction you like to hunt
for rubber-trees. 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. When once you have
settled the general direction in which you will explore, you go
straight ahead, for you are just as likely to find what you want in a
direct line as you would be if you let the fancy of every few minutes
lead you into clearing a more irregular, and therefore longer, path.
Of course, if you spot a rubber-tree a little way to the right or to
the left, you bend your path round to meet it. When you have linked up
about fifty Heveas, you curve your path so as to turn your face to the
starting-point, and make your way back there, locating rubber-trees as
you go along in the same way as on the outward journey; so by the time
you get back to the spot you set out from, you have cut an estrada that
is roughly elliptical in shape, and you have linked up from 100 to 120
Heveas. They are fine, sturdy old trees, too, for the most part. Some
are 60, 70, or even 80 feet high, and their circumference is anything
from 3 to 12 feet in the lower regions.
When you have made one estrada, you can set out in a different
direction from the same starting-point and clear another. Again and
again you can repeat the same method of exploration, and you can loop
up side estradas with the main ones. To complete your preparations for
obtaining rubber, you must build a hut near the spot where all the main
paths start and meet again, and arrange for labourers to come and take
up their abode in it and work for you.
To-day we are not going to cut estradas. We have come to a part of the
forest which is already looped with several such paths, and we are now
standing outside the hut where live the seringueiros who work them. The
time is about five in the morning, but, early as it is, the labourers
are getting ready for the business of the day; they are now collecting
their tools, and hurriedly swallowing the coffee they put to boil
whilst they were slipping into their few clothes.
We are joined by the seringueiro who is going to take us with him on
his round. He is wearing a battered felt wideawake, a cotton shirt
open at the neck, and an old pair of trousers that are tied round his
ankles with string; his feet are bare. He carries a small axe, called a
“machadinha”, and a big collection of small tin cups. When he gets to
the first rubber-tree on his beat, he deals it several blows with his
axe, making a girdle of cuts at a height which is conveniently within
his reach. This operation is known as “tapping,” or “bleeding.” Sap
immediately begins to trickle from the wounds he has made in the tree,
so under each cut he has to hang one of his collecting-cups. These are
fastened to the tree by means of a bit of tin on the rim, which he
bends over into the bark. Some seringueiros use clay cups, which they
affix to the trees with a dab of moist clay.
Evidently this tree we are standing by has often been operated upon,
for it has a wide belt of scars. Some of them look as if they were
the marks of very severe wounds; the gashes have healed under a new
skin of bark, but in such a way that the surrounding surface of the
trunk is very uneven with furrows and swellings. This disfigured
appearance is a sign that the tree has been roughly treated by previous
rubber-gatherers. However, if it had been as badly used by the early
generations of seringueiros as were some of the Heveas, it would not
now be here to tell us any tales about the reckless way in which
tapping used to be done in Brazil and neighbouring countries. So little
did the rubber-gatherers of the past care about the future welfare of
the rubber industry of the Amazon that they often used to fell the
valuable Heveas and hack them to pieces, sacrificing the source of
a continuous milk-supply to their greed for getting as much rubber
as possible at the moment, and with as little trouble as possible.
Some time ago masters began to see that they could not afford to let
their men be so wasteful; if the Hevea-trees were destroyed in the
more accessible parts of the forest, which had only been opened up at
much expense and under great difficulties, the hunting-grounds would
have to be extended farther inland, at far greater expense and under
much greater difficulties. 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.
[Illustration: A BALATA BLEEDERS’ CAMP. _Page 47_
_From a photograph in the British Guiana Section of the Imperial
Institute, by permission_]
In tapping a rubber-tree, the cut must only go deep enough to open
the cells which harbour the sap--which, by the way, in simple English
is called “milk,” and in technical language “latex.” These cells are
in the bark, extending from just beneath its surface to the cambium,
or true outer skin of the wood. If the tapping tool pierces the wood,
the tree gets maimed for life. Henceforth its supply of milk will be
more difficult to get at, for when the wounds are sufficiently healed
for the tree again to be tapped in the same region, the trunk will be
knotted and furrowed in the way you have already seen. Consequently the
milk-cells will be situated at different levels, instead of being
evenly distributed beneath a covering of smooth-faced bark, and ceasing
on the same level. Moreover, bad tapping makes the milk-supply poorer
in both quantity and quality. And when a tree is very badly wounded in
the wood it will very probably cease to give any milk at all.
While we have been talking about tapping in general, we have been
following our Brazilian friend along his estrada, watching him deal
with one tree after another in the same way as he treated the first one
on his round. After a long walk, we get back to that first tree. The
seringueiro now makes for his hut, puts away his axe, and picks up an
old tin can. Once more he starts off on the same round, and now, as he
goes from tree to tree, he unhooks the cups and pours their contents
into the larger collecting vessel. The milk has stopped running, but
the trees have yielded well this morning, and by the time the “milkman”
is nearing home again he has to carry the can very steadily so as not
to spill any of the morning’s supply.
It is nearly ten o’clock when we follow our leader into his hut once
more, and as we have had nothing to eat since we started out at five,
no wonder we do full justice to the meal he invites us to share with
him, and tell ourselves that dried beef and beans make very good fare.
We might think differently if we had breakfasted on this, or very
similar fare, every day for months past, and were not likely to get
anything very different at any meal for months to come.