16 THE RUBBER INDUSTRY 



attempt has been made to survey the lands held under 

 the various classes of title by which ownership is 

 claimed. Boundaries are defined by a certain length 

 of frontage to a river, with imaginary lines running 

 inland for so many leagues or kilometres, or occasion- 

 ally from a point on the river to a hill in the back- 

 ground, thence to some other prominent physical 

 feature and back to the river-bank. This condition of 

 affairs naturally leads to frequent disputes, especially 

 in districts rich in rubber-yielding trees ; but the area of 

 land is so vast and the population of such scanty pro- 

 portions that resource to litigation is almost unknown. 

 Might is right in most cases where these boundary 

 disputes arise, and the privileges of possession must be 

 maintained by force or abandoned to the successful 

 intruder. Many of these properties nominally com- 

 prise areas of several hundreds of square miles, and 

 it happens frequently that large sections have been 

 left unexplored by the owners. 



In such circumstances, titles to real estate possess 

 small value as negotiable securities for commercial 

 purposes. They are not assets against which bankers 

 or merchants are justified in making advances of money, 

 and are only accepted as additional security in cases 

 where loans are contracted to enable the crop of rubber 

 to be harvested under conditions entailing the shipment 

 of the year's produce to the creditor for sale in Manaos 

 or Para, or for export to Europe or the United States. 

 This uncertainty in regard to the tenure of land has 

 been one of the principal drawbacks in the past to the 

 acquisition to any great extent of real estate by foreign 

 syndicates, and has proved a serious obstacle to the 



