EXPERIENCES IN COLOMBIA 257 



canoes began to arrive bringing only chaza, as this class of rubber, in 

 view of the superior price it brought in the foreign markets, was paid 

 for at much higher rates than the ordinary cakes. This stimulated the 

 negroes, and about nine or ten years ago they began to plant rubber, 

 until today, of the estimated population of eighty thousand negroes in 

 the Choco, he is the exception who has not, if not bearing, at least a few 

 dozen trees planted. And some of them have as high as four thousand 

 trees in a plantation. 



Now, in the rubber shipped from Choco, the cake is the exception 

 and chaza the rule. 



The products of the Choco are shipped by the steamer Condor and 

 a number of dory shaped schooners to Cartagena on the Atlantic coast, 

 and by dugouts to Buenaventura on the Pacific. The only two vessels 



LUMBER. 



which have kept a record of their classified freight for the past year 

 are the steamer Condor and the schooner Tulia. Inquiry from their 

 owners resulted in the statement that they carried, during this period, 

 seventy-one and eighty tons of rubber respectively. As there are a 

 number of other schooners which run to Quibdo and are known to bring 

 rubber, it is entirely reasonable to place their entire total at that of 

 the Tnlia, or a general total to the port of Cartagena of two hundred 

 and thirty-one tons per year. Senor Luis Durier of the firm of Zuniga 

 and Diaz, at present manager of their Cartagena house, who has had 

 extended experience in the province of San Juan, says that unquestion- 

 ably this region ships as much as the Atrato. But if it shipped far less 

 we would still have a product of over a ton a day, the great majority of 

 which is chaza, or the product of standing cultivated trees. 



