PREPARATION OF DAPICHO. 345 



the missionary, was employed in reducing tie dapicho into 

 black caoutchouc. He nad spitted several bits on a slendei 

 stick, and was roasting them like meat. The dapicho black- 

 ens in proportion as it grows soft, and becomes elastic. 

 The resinous and aromatic smell which filled the hut, seemed 

 to indicate that this coloration is the effect of the decom- 

 position of a carburet of hydrogen, and that the carbon 

 appears in proportion as the hyclrogen burns at a low heat. 

 The Indian beat the softened and blackened mass with a 

 piece of brazil-wood, formed at one end like a club ; he then 

 Kneaded the dapicho into balls of three or four inches in 

 diameter, and let it cool. These balls exactly resemble the 

 caoutchouc of the shops, but their surface remains in general 

 slightly viscous. They are used at San Balthasar in the 

 Indian game of tennis, which is celebrated among the inha- 

 bitants of Uruana and Encaramada ; they are also cut into 

 cylinders, to be used as corks, and are far preferable to 

 those made of the bark of the cork-tree. 



This use of caoutchouc appeared to us the more worthy 

 notice, as we had been often embarrassed by the want of Euro- 

 pean corks. The great utility of cork is fully understood in 

 countries where trade has not supplied this bark in plenty. 

 Equinoctial America nowhere produces, not even on the 

 back of the Andes, an oak resembling the Quercus suber ; 

 and neither the light wood of the bombax, the ochroma, and 

 other malvaceous plants, nor the rhachis of maize, of which 

 the natives make use, can well supply the place of our corks. 

 The missionary showed us, before the Casa de los Solteros 

 (the house where the young unmarried men reside), a drum, 

 which was a hollow cylinder of wood, two feet long and 

 eighteen inches thick. This drum was beaten with great 

 masses of dapicho, which served as drumsticks; it had 

 openings which could be stopped by the hand at will, to 

 vary the sounds, and was fixed on two light supports. Sa- 

 vage notions love noisy music ; the drum and the botuto, or 

 trumpet of baked earth, in which a tube of three or four 

 feet long communicates with several barrels, are indis- 

 pensable instruments among the Indians for their grand 

 pieces of music. 



The night of the 30th of April was sufficiently fine for 

 observing the meridian heights of x of the Southern Cross, 



