84 RUBBER FORESTS OF NICARAGUA AND SIERRA LEONE 



takes a basketful of earthenware gill cups, a liunk of adliesive 

 cla}'', and a little, narrow-bladed hatchet. 



" If he adopts the most approved method of tapping the trees, 

 he reaches as high as he can with his hatchet, making an incision 

 in the bark, but not reaching through to the wood. The milk 

 immediately begins to issue in rapid drops or little streams. 

 With a spat of the adhesive clay he immediately fastens one of 

 his little gill clay cups just below the bleeding gash, and molds 

 the clay so as to make all the rubber milk flow into the cup. 

 Three such gashes, at equal distances around the tree and at 

 equal height, is the rule. The nextda}^ he will make three more 

 gashes in the same way, just a little below these three, and so 

 continue, until by the end of the season he will have reached the 

 level of the ground. Each of his 100 or 150 trees is treated in 

 the same way, and he returns home, after having traveled from 

 3 to 5 miles, barefoot and almost naked, through thorny thicket 

 and malarial, steaming swamp. 



" When he reaches his hut, he again takes another gulp from 

 the dem.ijohn, snatches a breakfast of salt fish and mandioca 

 meal, which are often moldy from the reeking damp of the 

 swamp, and then he starts out again with his calabash buckets 

 to gather the milk, which by this time has ceased to flow. His 

 gill cups are full, or nearly so, and when he reaches home he 

 has milk enough to make four kilos of rubber, on an average. 

 The next task is the coagulation of the milk. For this purpose 

 he has a jug-shaped furnace, made of earthenware, called a 

 boido, open at bottom and top, and with a small aperture at the 

 side to admit the air for the combustion. In this piece of fur- 

 niture he builds a fire, or rather a smudge, with the nuts of the 

 inija or urucur}'- palm. The dense, black smoke which rolls 

 from the open top of the boido is the reagent which coagulates 

 the milk. For this purpose the rubber-gatherer has a circular- 

 bladed paddle, like the paddle of a canoe, which he smears over 

 with clay, so that the rubber will not adhere to it. This is sus- 

 pended by means of a cord from the limb of a tree just above 

 the smudge, the milk is poured over the blade of the paddle, 

 which is then turned over and around about in the smoke,' and 

 in a few moments the film of rubber is coagulated. The same 

 process is repeated of wetting with milk and smoking the grow- 

 ing lump until it reaches the weight of from 5 to 25 kilos or 

 more. Then it is slipped off from the paddle as a mitten is 

 pulled off from one's hand. This ball is the crude rubber." 



