22 RUBBER 



Of course, if you spot a rubber-tree a little way to the 

 right or to the left, you bend your path round to meet 

 it. When you have linked up about fifty Heveas, you 

 curve your path so as to turn your face to the starting- 

 point, and make your way back there, locating rubber- 

 trees as you go along in the same way as on the 

 outward journey ; so by the time you get back to the 

 spot you set out from, you have cut an estrada that 

 is roughly elliptical in shape, and you have linked up 

 from 100 to 120 Heveas. They are fine, sturdy old 

 trees, too, for the most part. Some are 60, 70, or 

 even 80 feet high, and their circumference is anything 

 from 3 to 12 feet in the lower regions. 



When you have made one estrada, you can set out 

 in a different direction from the same starting-point 

 and clear another. Again and again j^^ou can repeat the 

 same method of exploration, and you can loop up 

 side estradas with the main ones. To complete your 

 preparations for obtaining rubber, you must build a 

 hut near the spot where all the main paths start and 

 meet again, and arrange for labourers to come and 

 take up their abode in it and work for you. 



To-day we are not going to cut estradas. We have 

 come to a part of the forest which is already looped 

 with several such paths, and we are now standing 

 outside the hut where live the seringueiros who work 

 them. The time is about four in the morning, but, 

 early as it is, the labourers are getting ready for the 

 business of the day ; they are now collecting their 

 tools, and hurriedly swallowing the cofEee they put to 

 boil whilst they were slipping into their few clothes. 



We are joined by the seringueiro who is going to 

 take us with him on his round. He is wearing a 



