Mai 



'903] 



THE INDIA RUBBER WORLD 



261 



GATHERING RUBBER UNDERGROUND. 



SOME experiments in rubber culture in progress in Africa 

 may lead to the extensive growing of a class of rubbei 



plants which, while little has been known of thtti) hith- 

 erto. are already of commercial importance. It now ap- 

 pears that the Lando/phia climbers supply a smaller pi up ttii n 

 of the African rubber output than has been supposed. What- 

 the French call Caou/ kouc dts Aeries, and the Germans wursel- 

 kautschuk (root rubber), is really what the natives in man) dis- 

 tricts have been collecting for several years, in quantities not 

 suspected until recently. The latest scientific investigation of 

 the sources of African rubber, however, confirm casual state- 

 ments made from time to time by explorers and traders about 

 rubber being obtained underground. An English physician, 

 visiting missionary stations in Angola (Portuguese West Africa 

 twelve years ago, while on the Bihe plateau, inland from the 

 seaport of Benguela. and among the headwaters of the Kwanza 

 river, recorded in his notes :* 



Rubber has to be dug for with hoes only a small plant showing above 

 ground , the roots, from which it is obtained, running along for many 

 yards, about six inches below the surface, varying in size from a quarter 

 inch to an inch and a half. These roots are beaten with wooden mallets 

 and boiled in water; when the rubber dissolves out it is collected and 

 formed into balls, mixed a good deal with woody fiber. 



The United States consul in Angola had already reported, in 



1891,1 that about three 

 years previously a new- 

 source of rubber had 

 been discovered in the 

 Bihe country, and he 

 was given to understand 

 that the great increase 

 in rubber shipments 

 from the port of Bengue- 

 la which followed had 

 been due to this discov- 

 ery. From a hundred 

 landolphiathollonii. tons or so yearly, before 



[From Industrie et Commerce du Caoutchouc^ that per j of j, t h e Bengue- 

 la exports continued to increase until amounting in a single 

 year to 5,000,000 pounds. Mr. Frank Vincent, an American 

 traveler,} next contributed a note on the subject : 



Governor Paula Cid told me that in the year 1887 the exports of Ben- 

 guela took a sudden jump upwards, owing to the appearance in the 

 markets of a new kind of India-rubber, which is extracted (rem the roots 

 of a small shrub that grows spontaneously on the banks of certain rivers 

 in the interior. 



The British consul at Loandi in 1899 reported : " Angola 

 rubber is said to come very largely from a small creeper which 

 struggles over sandy soil or desert places, incapable apparently 

 of other productions." 



The above quotations state precisely what has been found to 

 be true of rubber gathering, not only in Angola, but in parts of 

 the Congo Free State, French Congo, and other districts in 

 Africa. Years later the botanist Baum, traveling in the Ger- 

 man possessions south of Angola, observed the collection of 

 '• root rubber " on which he reported fully, with photographs 



* Reality versus Romance in South Central Africa. By James Johnson, m . n. 

 New Vor k: r8o3 P 107. 



^Special Consular Reports. India-Rubber Washington: 1892. P. 435. 



* Actual Africa ; or the Coming Continent New York : 1S95. P. 379. 



of the various operations involved *> —not for the interest of the 

 curious, but to depict a considerable industry along the river 

 Kunene. It is true that some of the earlier mentions of " root 

 rubber " confused it with " Almeidina," a cheap gum exported 

 in small quantities from the port of Mossamedes, in Angola, 

 but not included in the customs returns of rubber shipments. 

 The name " potato rubber," sometimes given to the latter, re- 

 lated to the appearance of the balls into which it was formed, 

 and not to its source, though it did lead to the impression that 

 it was dug from the earth as tubers. 



The botanists are yet struggling with the nomenclature of 

 this class of rubber plants, though agreed that they belong to 

 the natural order Apocynaceie and are confined mainly to two 

 genera — ' 'arpodinus and ( l/nandra. The ' 'arpodinus lanceo- 

 /a/us is supposed to yield the greater part of the rubber known 

 as "Benguela niggers" and Lower Congo "thimbles." Dr. 

 D.ivid Morris says :* 



The interesting point is that these are neither trees nor shrubby 

 climbers, as other rubber yielding plants in tropical Africa. They are 

 described as low plants with slender, semi-herbaceous stems one to two 

 feet high, and white aromatic flowers. They are iound in great abun- 

 dance on the sandy expanses in the Kwango district south of Stanley 

 Pool [on the Congo river], and from this region alone it is said that 500 

 tons of rubber are produced yearly. - - - Although the stems contain 

 rubber, the larger share is at present obtained from the creeping under- 

 ground stems (rhizomes). These are about an inch in diameter and the 

 natives extract the rubber by rasping them in water and then boiling. 

 In this way a large quantity of vegetable debris is taken up with the 

 rubber and the quality is thereby impaired. - - - The discovery of 

 these remarkable rubber plants shows how far we still are from knowing 

 the full extent of the sources whence the valuable product may be ob- 

 tained. It is possible that these new pknts may be available for < ulti- 

 vation, and give returns earlier than other rubber plants. They could 

 evidently be easily propagated by means of pieces of the rhizomes, and 



although it would be 

 necessary to destroy 

 many of the plants 

 to obtain the rubber . 

 there is a probability 

 that nume ous pieces 

 of the rhizomes could 

 be left in the ground 

 to carry on the cul- 

 tivation. 



The native hab- 

 itat of these plants 

 is in certain wide 

 stretches of coun- 

 try in interior Af- 

 rica, not covered 

 with such luxur- 

 iant forests as Sir 

 Henry Stanley, for 

 instance, has de- 

 carpodinus lanceolatus. scribed on the up- 



[From K. de Wildeman's " Les Plantes Tropicales."] per Congo, and 



under a much less humid climate. Herr Baum wrote that the 

 "root rubber" district in the Kunene country was so devoid 



§ Da r> yvi' :,i»zer, IV Jahrg. Pp -tr^-tSo. 



•Cantor Lecrures on the Plants Yielding Commercial India- Rubber. London: 

 1898. P. 34. 



