INDIAN RUBBER. CAOUTCHOUC. 221 



nians buried their heroes were of cypress wood. 

 The doors of Saint Peter's church at Rome were 

 originally made of this timber; and when they were 

 removed at the end of six hundred years, that 

 gates of brass might be put into their place, they 

 did not show the slightest appearance of decay. 

 In the island of Candia, where the cypress grows 

 in abundance, the trees are so valuable, that one 

 of them is reckoned a daughter's portion. 



The tree that produces the Indian rubber, or 

 Caoutchouc, which was first introduced into Eu- 

 rope about the beginning of the last century, is a 

 native of the West Indies. This substance is an 

 elastic resin, of very singular properties, which is 

 deposited by a liquor that oozes out from incisions 

 cut in the bark of a tree called Jat'ropha elas'tica, 

 and when fresh and pure is of a whitish colour ; 

 but it becomes brown by exposure to the air. A 

 gum of the same kind is procured from several 

 other trees ; among which is the Jaca-tree, that I 

 have already mentioned to you. The Indians make 

 boots of Caoutchouc which are water-proof, and, 

 when smoked, look like leather : the inhabitants of 

 Quito, in South America, prepare from it a kind 

 of cloth which they use as we do oil-cloth and sail- 

 cloth ; and in India, flambeaux are made of it, 

 that burn without a wick, and are used by fisher- 

 men when they go out at night to fish. A very 

 ingenious application of it, for making cloth water^ 



