[l i, 1903.] 



THE INDIA RUBBER WORLD 



293 



RUBBER PLANTING ON THE ISTHMUS OF TEHUANTEPEC. 



• As Seen by the Eiiitot of " The India Rubber World. " 



Kind 



LA VENTURA. 



SKCOND LETT1 R. 

 A Prosperous Private Plantation. — Hunting for Barren Rubber 

 Trees. — Planting in Favorable and Unfavorable Locations. — Con 

 ditions for Successful Planting.— The Dry and Rainy Seasons. — 

 Visits to Neighboring Plantations. — " Ixtal." — Snakes — '■ La 

 Junta." — The Agricultural " Mozo." — Negro Laborers. — A Mid 

 night Ride. — Freedom from Plant Pests. 



r HE site of the plantation " I.i Ventura" five years a^. 

 was virgin forest. At that lime Mr. James C. Harvey 

 and his son Clarence purchased for themselves and 

 their associates (a private corporation) 1000 acres ol 

 ind prepared to develop it along the most practical lines. 

 When the senior of the two first came to Mexico it was with 

 the idea of planting coffee, but after months 

 of study and a personal inspection of most 

 of the Isthmus country he decided that India rubber offered 

 the best opportunity for profit, and therefore has turned the 

 larger part of his land into a plantation of 1 asiilloa elastica. 1 

 am enlarging upon this a trifle because, to my certain knowledge, 

 the gentleman under consideration is 

 not only an expert horticulturist and 

 botanist, but has studied tropical agri- 

 culture in Central and South America, 

 and in the East Indies and West Indies, 

 and beyond this he and his associates 

 offered no stock for sale, but went into 

 the business to make money out of 

 their own investment of capital, en- 

 ergy, and knowledge. Such a planta- 

 tion must, without fail, give the visitor 

 the best possible view of the practical 

 end of the business. There are, of 

 course, many such private estates in the 

 tropics, but it happened that this was 

 the one that I knew most of and to visit 

 which I had a most cordial invitation. 



Here I was, therefore, installed in 

 the palm thatched house, with its 

 earthen floor and bamboo walls, that 

 for five years had been the home of 

 these hardy pioneers. The domicile 

 was situated at one end of a long ridge, 

 on each side of which, with a rare eye 



to effect, were planted gorgeous flow- " LA - ,UNTA " RUBBI ' " ' 

 ering and foliage plants, and trees valuable for lruit and for or- 

 nament. Very modestly the presiding genius showed me sixty- 

 five different species of palms, probably the largest collection in 

 the Americas. Not only were there palms native to the tropical 

 parts of America but there were specimens from Java, Ceylon, 

 New Guinea, Queensland, the Fiji islands, New South Wales, 

 and a score of other remote places. These were gathered, not 

 as part of the planting proposition, but from a plant lover's in- 

 terest alone, which they seemed to appreciate by growing lux- 

 uriantly. 



Then too, I must not forget the collection of orchids that 

 hung from the bamboo lattice outside of the house, and clung 

 to the trees on all sides; nor the orange, lemon, lime, grape- 

 fruit, banana, and plantain trees, a notable part of the garden 

 equipment. I looked with interest also on the vanilla vines, 



YIELD OF 

 LATEX. 



pies, but my chief thought was rubber and so, I soon found, 

 was his. I do not wish to make my planter friend blush, but 

 when I found the work he was doing, how widely he was con- 

 sulted by planters both in Mexico and in distant tropical lands, 

 I was more than ever impressed with my wonderful luck in thus 

 "striking oil" when first I began to bore. So I asked ques- 

 tions, and questions, and questions, and took notes most cop- 

 iously all the time. 



One of the first points that ! wanted settled was, whether 

 here or elsewhere, there were Caslilloa trees either wild or cul- 

 tivated, that did not yield latex. So we both start- 

 ed out to find one such tree, by cutting the outer 

 bark — indeed during all of the trip I cut trees by 

 the hundred just to prove this point — but found none except in 

 one instance, which will be related later. I was much interest 

 ed also to note the differences in the latex as it issued forth. 

 In some instances the tree would send forth a perfect shower 

 of milkwhite drops, which coagulated rather slowly, while 

 another near by would exude a thicker 

 fluid that began to coagulate almost 

 immediately. The natives claim that 

 this latter tree is simply so rich in rub- 

 ber that it retards the flow, and that, 

 after a little tapping, it corrects itself 

 and the latex becomes more fluid. 



The younger trees all gave out abun- 

 dant latex, but those that were less 

 than four years old gave a milk that 

 seemed immature; that is, it did not 

 coagulate into dry hard rubber but re- 

 mained quite sticky. I noted also a 

 curious thing in connection with this, 

 which was that in the younger trees 

 the latex began to mature first near the 

 base of the tree, while up toward the 

 branches it still remained of the sticky 

 sort. But we found no trees in this 

 district that did not yield latex abun- 

 dantly. 



At " La Ventura " I was able to insti- 

 tute some exceedingly interesting com- 

 parisons between the growth of the 

 7 months old from sKEi.. rubber tree un der favorable and unfav- 

 orable conditions. In both cases the trees were Castilloas 

 planted from selected seed. In the first instance they were 

 planted in the open, about 9 feet apart, on rolling land which 

 had good drainage. Measuring the circumference of the 

 trunks a foot above the ground, I got a fair average of 23.3 

 inches, and an estimated average height of 22 feet. The ban- 

 ner Caslilloa was a seedling planted in the open that measured 

 32 inches in circumference and 25 feet high. All of these trees 

 had every appearance of health and vigor and gave forth milk 

 abundantly. From the records shown me, they were a trifle 

 over four years old. In the second instance, grown in partial 

 shade, such as produced fine cacao, with the land more level 

 and not well drained, the trees being planted at exactly the 

 same time, and from the same lot of seed, I got an average of 

 4.6 inches for circumference a foot above the ground, and an 



the cacao plantation, and the twenty-five varieties of pineap- average height of 6 feet. Anyone would not seem to need a 



