WE GO WITH A SERINGUEIRO ON HIS ROUND 23 



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 collec- 

 tion 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 imme- 

 diately 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 the} 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 



