April 1, 1911.] 



THE INDIA RUBBER WORLD 



221 



India-Rubber in Dutch Guiana. 



By the Editor of "The India Rubber World." 



FOURTH LETTER 

 By Launch to La Liberte. — Bananas and "Hevea." — A Plantation with 

 Water Roads. — A Launch Trip Up the Para River. — Plantation of Crocodiles. — 

 Pole Bridfifs. — Waterland. — Voirburg. — Coolie Drawn Punts. — Up the Com- 

 mowyne. — Katwyk. — A Peep at Pi^tcrzorg. — Javanese Coolies. — A Coolie 

 Festival. 



ONE of our morning trips was to a large cocoa plantation, 

 La Liberte, owned by the Balata Man, to sec his plant- 

 ings of Para 

 rubber. 



The little steam 

 launch Ellen, moored 

 to the slippery tide- 

 washed steps of the 

 Club House slelling. 

 was our meeting- 

 place soon after 

 early coffee. Then, 

 as she chugged up- 

 stream against the 

 outgoing tide, we 

 had breakfast on 

 the little awning- 

 covered quarterdeck 

 The plantation wa> 

 about an hour up 

 the Surinanie, and 

 had a substantial 

 landing pier, down 

 which a flight of 

 steep wooden steps 

 ran into and under 

 the water, the last 

 three or four steps 

 being always coated 

 with river slime. 

 This plantation had 

 once been a great 

 sugar estate, the 

 grinding being done 

 by a tide mill. The 

 present owner had 

 biiuglit it for coiTee, 

 and that not being 

 prolitable enough he 

 had turned to cocoa. 

 A most productive 

 and beautiful estate 

 was the result, until 

 suddenly the dread- 

 ed w i t c h-b room 

 made its appearance. 

 When the cocoa tree 

 throws out green 

 shoots of three or 

 four times their 

 normal diameter, 

 adorned with abund- 

 ant leaves twice as 



big and twice as glossy as the rest of tlic tree bears, that is 

 the witch-broom. It sucks the vitality from the trees until it 

 stops fruiting. The disease is said to have had its beginning 

 in the Guianas and has spread like wildfire and done incredible 

 damage. By pruning and spraying it can be cured, but the 



>IX Vi;.\R OLD HEVEA TKICK.S 



menace of its presence is turning more than one cocoa estate 

 into a rubber plantation. Our host, hke a true fighting Dutch- 

 man, had no thuuglit of abandoning his prolitable cocoa, but was 

 curbing the pest with one hand and planting rubber with the 

 other. He was also planting bananas, as the ubiquitous fruit 

 company have a long time ci ntract for many thousands of 



bunches from this 

 territory, and every 

 Dutch boat going 

 north carries its 

 quota. The l)ananas 

 were interplantcd 

 with young Hevea, 

 drawn from a nurs- 

 ery of 25,000 trees 

 that had some time 

 before been estab- 

 lished on the estate. 

 It seemed odd, but 

 tlie seeds for the 

 planting came from 

 far away Ceylon. 

 One would imagine 

 that Guiana's near 

 nciglibor, Brazil, 

 with Hevea seeds 

 rotting on tlie 

 ground by tlie hun- 

 dred t Ii o 11 s a n d, 

 would be the natural 

 source of supply, but 

 such is not the case, 

 and seed shipments 

 of from 20,000 to 

 1,000.000 are con- 

 stantly made from 

 the Far East. They 

 cost about a cent 

 apiece on arrival, 

 and sometimes 5 per 

 cent, of tliem germ- 

 inate and sometimes 

 95 per cent. That 

 depends upon care 

 in gathering and 

 .storing, in packing, 

 and in a measure 

 on the season of the 

 year in which they 

 take their journey, 

 it is affirmed by 

 planters that seeds 

 that come by way 

 of England in the 

 cold weather suffer 

 most. 



There were two 

 systems of canals on tliis estate — the drainage canal with flood- 

 gates housed under trim brick porticos standing sentinel along 

 the river bank ; and a wide traffic canal that divided the planta- 

 tion in half, together with several lengthy laterals, giving easy 

 access to all parts of the estate. 



