April 2, 1900.] THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 667 
inp;; At the harvaca the collector lights in hia hut 
a Are of palm^^'ood, with which the nut of the 
Montacu palm is mixed, if it can be obtained. He 
places a funnel over it to collect the smoke, and 
then, taking a kind of small wooden paddle 
(something like a squash racket bat) in his hand, 
dips the broad end into the milk, which covers 
it with a thin layer. He now holds the paddle 
over the lire in the smoke, turning its faces 
alternately to the heat. The layer of milk is 
thus rapidly smoked and coagulated into hard 
cured rubber. The paddle is then dipped into the 
milk again and the process repeated until a large 
cake has been formed. When the cake has reached 
a convenient size it is slit down the sides and 
stripped from the paddle. The figure-of-8-shaped 
lumps thus formed are ready for export. They 
still contain about 7 per cent, of water which 
gradually dries out in the next few mouths, and 
for which allowance must be made in weighing. 
In the Mapiri district, it is usual to cure the 
production of each day separately, so that each 
collector's work can be controlled. Moreover 
rubber so cured can be easily tested for clean- 
ness and purity. Lower down the Amazon the 
custom is to smoke one day's rubber on top of 
the previous day's, making larger bolachos, into 
which dishonest workmen more easily introduce 
stones and other adulterations. 
The average amount of rubber which one col- 
lector produces on one day is ver}' variouslj^ stated. 
On the Lower Amazon 7 lb. daily is the figure 
quoted, on the Upper Amazon 21 lb. daily. In 
the Mollendo district the lower of these figures 
does not appear to be reached under present 
management. To this cured rubber must be 
added the scraps and remnants called sernambi, 
which include the cicatraces of the incision of 
the bark, the cleanings of the i^((7((?cs-, &c. The 
■■amount of the sernambi is equivalent to about 
'10 per cent, of the smoked rubber ; its price is 
.'from 1.5 to 20 per cent, less than the price of 
' smoked rubber. 
' The pica or rubber-harvest is collected twice a 
■year in the Mollendo forests, from April to .Julj^, 
and from October to March. It appears that a 
single tree can only be tapped during three 
months of one year, and then needs nine months' 
rest. If thus treated, and if a good broad strip 
ef bark is left untapped from bottom to bop, the 
health of a tree does not seem to be interfered 
with. For how many years it is possible to go 
on tapping a single tree we do not yet know. 
There is a tree in the barraca Cristina, in Senor 
Violand's San Antonio estate, which was stripped 
of all the bark on one side, and yet had yielded 
milk from the remaining bark during six picas 
in six successive years ; the tree still retains a 
throughly healthy appearance. It is certain that 
the life of a tree, though annually tapped, is a 
long one, and exceeds the fifteen yeai's which 
are required for th e growth of a tree fiom seed, 
KO that the forest may be perennially tapped, and 
will give a fairly constant yield when thorougly 
opened up and worked. This, however, implies 
that the trees are carefully handled ; the yield 
of a mishandled tree falls off. The average yearly 
output of a fuUgrown tree is variously stated. 
Some put it as high as 7 lb.; no one puts it at 
less than 3 lb. of cured rubber (after 10 per cent, 
has been deducted for drying). 
The cost of production in Bolivian dollars for 
100 lb. of Mellendo rubber in the Mapiri forest 
is as follows :— Dols. 
Paid to contractor per 100 lb .. ... 73 "00 
Loss in weight, 10, per cent. ... ... 7'30 
Freight from the forest to Sorata town .5'00 
Commissions and road tolls ... ... "00 
Cost of administration ... ... lO'OO 
Sacking, packing, commission, and freight 
to Chililaya on Lake Tiiicuca ... 2 '20 
Freight, inaulance, and incidejital ex- 
penses to London ... ... ... 12'00 
110-lC 
Or reckoning the Bolivian dollar at 18d., the cost 
of 1 lb. of Mapirijrubber put in London is 19"82d. 
From the books of two other forest owners 
in tlie same neighbourhood I find a slightly higher 
cost, 20'16d. per lb. The present price of this 
rubber in London has now risen, as above stated, 
to 4s. lid. per lb. 
Coming now to a consideration of the possible 
SUPPLY of rubber to be drawn from the Mollendo 
forests, we enter a region of conjecture, for of 
course the trees have not been counted nor even 
the number of estradas. A part of one estate 
has been recently proved to contain 6,110 estradas 
(961,500 trees), when, according to the original 
estimate, the whole estate contained only 500,000 
trees. Five million trees may be taken as the 
lowest probable limit of the number of trees, 
whilst they ma.y not improbably turn out to 
reach 10,000,000 or even more. Now in the year 
1897-8 the amount of Mollendo rubber exported 
was 491,087 lb. which at 3 lb. per tree, represents 
the yield of only 163,695 trees, and the same 
number of days' labour at 3 lb. per man per day. 
If one Indian is taken as wor-king for three 
weeks, this represents the labour of only 7,795 
Indians out of a population of 300,000 in the 
department of La Paz. At the lowest reckoning, 
therefore, the output of Mollendo rubber might 
be increased 30-fold without planting a tree. 
How is this development to be attained? 
Without going into financial questions con- 
cerned with any possible purchase of the estates 
and concentration of them under single manage- 
ment, a few essential features of the pi-o- 
blem may be pointed out. To begin with, the 
first necessity is to make good mule roads over 
the high passes that lead from the town of Sorata 
and from the Bolivian plateau to the chief eastern 
vallej's and down those valleys to the forests. 
These roads would, of course, be very useful to 
the gold miners, coffee planters, and others 
whose work leads them to the eastward. They 
are, thei'efore, rather work for the Government 
than for the rubber-forest proprietors ; but the 
Government is poor and cannot afford to make 
them. If made at -ill, in the immediate futui-e, 
the forest proprietors must make them. The 
main roads having been made, it is necessary 
to cut forest tracks from one estracla to another, 
as only the estradas easily accessible have yet 
been touched. This implies additional labour, 
wise oversight, and intelligent exploration. 
At present all the food consumed by the 
rubber collectors has to be carried in to the 
forests from Sorata or the plateau — a great waste 
of labour. It would be perfectly easy to raise 
any quantity of food in the hot A^alleys, which 
are of the richest natural fertility : but such 
cultivation implies preliminary colonisation. As 
already stated it would be impossible to colonise 
these low, hot valle?'s T^•ith Indans from the 
Tibet-like plateau. Chinese coolies are the class 
most suited for -such work. They could be ob- 
tained very easily from San Francisco. A nucleus 
of such men, who would soon become expert in 
working the rubber forests, would enable the 
industry of rubber collection to be far better 
organised than it is today, and opportunities of 
theft would be reduced. Large areas in these 
valleys which do not carry rubber are suitable 
for coffee plantations, and such plantations as 
do exist produce the finest coffee of South America, 
and some of the finest in the world, so that here 
also important future developments may be ex- 
pected. What is true of coftee is true also of 
cocoa, for which a large local market exist among 
the Indians of Bolivia. Such developments of the 
rubber industry imply, not merely concentration 
or co-ordination of proprietorship, but skilled admi- 
nistration and scientific experience, which could 
only come in the wake of capital. At present every- 
thing is done experimentally, or by rule of tljumb. 
The Bolivian Government would certainly favour 
such an enterprise providing that roadnaaking and, 
