190 THE TROPICAL WORLD. 



thousand of these bales to Liverpool, whence, perhaps on the 

 day of their arrival, they are conveyed by rail to the next manu- 

 facturing town, which returns them in a few days to the port, 

 ready to clotlie the Australian gold-digger or the labourer on 

 the banks of the Ganges. 



India, which still in the last century provided Europe with 

 the finest cambrics and muslins, now yearly receives from 

 England cotton goods to a large amount. Thus the stream of 

 trade may be said to have rolled backwards to its source, for 

 though the wants of the Hindoo are easily satisfied, and 

 cotton grows at his very door, yet his hand-loom is unable to 

 compete with the machinery and the capital of England. Even 

 in the exportation of the raw material he labours under great 

 disadvantage when compared with America, though railroads 

 and a better system of culture have done much to improve the 

 quality and facilitate the transport of Indian cotton. 



When we consider the luxuriance of vegetation in the 

 tropical zone, it is not to be wondered at that so many plants of 

 those climes abound with juices of a variety and richness un- 

 known to those of the temperate latitudes. The resins and 

 gums which our indigenous trees produce, either in smaller 

 quantities or fit only for common uses, are there endowed with 

 higher virtues, and ennobled, as it were, by the rays of a more 

 powerful sun. Sometimes they exude spontaneously through 

 the rind and harden in the atmosphere ; more frequently a 

 slight incision is required to make the sap gusli forth in which 

 they are dissolved, but in every case they require but trifling 

 labour for their collection. Many of them have medicinal 

 qualities, others are esteemed for their aromatic odour, but 

 none ranks higher in a commercial and technical point of view 

 than caoutchouc or India-rubber, which was first brought from 

 South America to Europe as a great curiosity at the beginning 

 of the last century, and is now absolutely indispensable for a 

 thousand different uses. Nothing was known even of its origin 

 until the year 1736, when the French naturalist La Condamine, 

 while exploring the banks of the Amazon, discovered that it 

 was chiefly produced by the Siphonia elastica, a large tree 

 growing wild in the primitive forests along the borders of the 

 rivers in Gruiana and North Brazil. 



The resin is collected by the Indians in a very simple 



