October i, 1905.] 



THE INDIA RUBBER WORLD 



MOUNTAIN ROAD NEAR SAN JOSE. 



(ailing rocks and for land- 

 slides, and I fancy he is also 

 particularly careful not to let 

 the train get away from him, 

 which, with the number of 

 cars and the heavy freight car- 

 ried, would seem to be a not 

 unlikely happening. We there- 

 fore enjoyed afresh the mag- 

 nificent scenery, and, before 

 we got down to the tropics, 

 the lovely, springlike weather. 

 Reaching the plantation we 

 were warmly welcomed by the 

 planter in charge, who got us 

 hrirses and look us over the 

 planting. It was the dry sea- 

 son and there had been no 

 rain at all for five days, but 

 the ground was exceedingly 

 soggy and wet, and while the 

 bananas were apparently very 

 thrifty, the rubber did not 

 look as well as it should. The 

 leaves, to be sure, were shed- 

 ding, which made the trees 

 look their worst, but the few 

 trees that we tapped gave out 

 an exceedingly thin milk, more 

 like skimmed milk than cream 

 containing for a guess, not 

 over 20 per cent of rubber. It 

 is possible, of course, that at 

 the end of the dry season this 

 might thicken up appreciably 

 and be worth extracting, but 

 unless that happened, they 

 would hardly pay to tap. 



In this connection a chat 

 that I had with Mr. John M. 

 Keith, the former planting ex- 

 pert of the United Fruit Co., 

 is apropos. He said frankly 

 that m that part of Costa Rica 

 he did not think there was 

 much land that was available 

 for Castilloa growing ; that it 

 was too wet ; that he had had 

 discovered that wild Casii'lloas 

 that grew in wet places gave 

 so thin a latex that the rubber 

 was not worth gathering. My 

 friend the planter had, while 

 I was in New York, told me 

 of another type of planting 

 that he had done by clearing 

 wide pathways through the 

 forest and planting Ciistilloas 

 so thickly that they took en- 

 tire possession of the ground. 

 SCENE IN STREET IN SAN JOSE. With somc little trouble we 



and getting up at daybreak, boarded the train and retraced finally located two of these plantings, and they settled in my 

 our steps, slid slowly downward for hours, until we reached mind forever the practicability of this sort of cultivation. The 

 the lower levels. The journey downward was even slower than Castilloas had grown like weeds, but they looked more like 

 the climb, as the engineer must be on the lookout constantly for fishpoles than rubber trees. By cutting out some of them and 



sullen air so prevalent in cer- 

 tain parts of Spanish America. 



During our stay in the coun- 

 try we put up at the Hotel 

 Imperial, where we had com- 

 fortable rooms and enjoyed an 

 excellent table. As a matter 

 of course, we asked many 

 questions about rubber cul- 

 ture, but from the natives or 

 the resident Americans we 

 developed little information 

 One of the latter explained it 

 by saying that in that country 

 at the present time bananas 

 were the whole game, because 

 they gave quicker results and 

 had behind them the support 

 of the United Fruit Co., who 

 were perfectly willing that the 

 planters should make a good 

 thing out of their fruit. One 

 native explained the lack of 

 interest in rubber planting by 

 telling us solemnly that rubber 

 seeds planted by man would 

 not develop into productive 

 trees. He said that nature's 

 way of distributing the seeds 

 was for the birds to eat them 

 in order to get the sweet pulp 

 with which they are surround- 

 ed, and mingled with their 

 droppings, the seed grew into 

 a tree that was a rubber pro- 

 ducer. If it did not go through 

 this preparatory process, it 

 amounted to nothing. 



Although we had not come 

 to Costa Rica particularly to 

 look up rubber, there was one 

 plantation that I was anxious 

 to examine, which was said to 

 contain over 100,000 Castilloas, 

 most of which had been inter- 

 planted with bananas. These 

 trees were said to be three or 

 four years old, and planted by 

 one who had had much expe- 

 rience in tropical forestry 

 throughout Central America. 

 The Importer was so much 

 pleased with the city of San 

 Jose and so relieved to get out 

 of the heat of the lowlands 

 that he decided to stay there, 

 while the Manufacturer and 

 the writer took another 

 plunge into the hot country. 

 We, therefore, left him for a 

 further exploration of the city 



TOPICAL COSTA RICAN LAND CLEARED FOR PASTURE, 

 LEFT STANDING (ON THE LEFT). 



