INDIAN MANUFACTURE. 45 



The plate 1 represents an Indian camp in the vicinity of 

 Para, where the gum is manufactured, from which place most 

 of the gum has heretofore been exported to the United States. 



No. 1, in the cut, . Indian tapping the tree. 



"2 " . Attaching the clay pipes. 



"3 " . Pouring tiie gum upon lasts or clay forms. 



"4 " . Smokincn tlie shoes or bottles. 



The two words, Indian-rubber and India-rubber, are indiffer- 

 ently applied to caoutchouc or gum-elastic : both of these terms 

 are alike correct ; and the first, as relates to the Indian of Brazil 

 and his manufacture ; the latter, as applied to the article coming 

 also from India. 



The articles of native gum heretofore imported from Para, as 

 shoes, bottles, and toys, have always been exclusively made by 

 these Indians. In this manufacture, the ingenuity of the savage 

 may excite our admiration, especially if we take for granted, as 

 in the absence of other information to the contrary we are 

 authorized to do, that he is the inventor of the moulding and 

 smoking process. This art is practiced by the natives, a tribe 

 of Omagua, and is unknown in any other part of the globe. 

 The shoes of their manufacture have been imported into the 

 United States since 1820, and the bottles since 1800. These 

 w^ere first cut in pieces, and used for rubbing out pencil marks, 

 and it is from this apparently trivial application that the sub- 

 stance took the name of rubber. The average export of Para 

 shoes to the United States since 1820, has amounted to about 

 five hundred thousand pairs per annum ; and the export of India 

 rubber from Para in the form of shoes, will no doubt continue 

 for a long time to come. For it always happens that when 

 articles of great utility once obtain in the market, a long time 

 must elapse before their consumption ceases, however great the 

 subsequent improvements in these articles, or their substitutes 

 may be. 



The Indian manufacture of the gum is conducted on a small 



