THE TROPICAL 
AGKICULTURIST. [Juke 1, 1899. 
and made hclplcHS. He is our creation. Yc-t we 
have piovided no place on the fccale for him tliat is 
tolerable. We have in fact if^nored his Htli -lesjjcct 
tbinkin'^ he Rliould I") content with ihe crumbs lhat 
(all from his mastei'j table nini yet even of Ihciie 
crumbs very few are allowed to come hi» way. Then 
we speak of his lack of will and ' grit " as if Ihe^e 
qnalilips could survive where there ia no room for 
aelf-respect. Our English iciness and lack of Fyni- 
pathetic imagination are not only a barrier between 
the natives and ourselves, they also chill and paralyKe 
the East Indian so that we never f,'et the best out 
of him. That he is capable of sustained liard work, 
1 have reason to know and that under happier 
circumstances his little weaknesses would (jive way 
to more manly qualities I have little doubt. The 
cultivation of ihe soil would bring him back to those 
natural conditions from wliich his toul is estranKed 
by a generation of town loating and rouse iu him the 
instinct of possession in the land which after all is 
as much, or should be as much liia as, the natives. 
The nucleus of a healthy population of East ludiaua 
might therefore be formed in liurma, the one pioviuce 
in India so greatly in need of intelligent labor and 
the only one also where no native population need 
be ousted as it has vast unoccupied lands where 
tea and coffee would certainly grow well and such 
bye-products as cacao, ginger, vanilla and almost 
all kiods of tropical fruitn could also be successfully 
cultivated juc'giug by condiiions of soil and climate. 
Bat first of all the inert and self-salitfied (jov- 
enment of Burma must be educated beyond the 
Civil Service ideas of Government in which it is 
swathed and the planting class are the men to do 
that. 11. B. 
RUBBER: NOTES FROM PARA. 
It is estimated tliat in Aniazona.s .state tlii.s vear 
the budR-et will show a surplus of 1(),(KX),(XX) 
milreis (=$5, 400,000 at par of e.xchan^^e), due 
chiefly to the cxten,sive trade in rubber which 
centers at Manaos. An " Export (hily of 20 odd 
pel" cent, oii rubber," says tlie I?io Xi ii m, " is a 
.mine of wealth for the Amazon state.s in these 
times, and is better than cofl'ce or any othei- 
product." 
Dr. Vicente Miranda, a civil engineer, is writhig 
for A Prori nvia do Para an interesting .series 
■ of articles on the little known islands of Mcxiana 
and Caviana, which lie heyon-l the island of 
Marajo. The length of Mexiana, the smaller, ia 
-estimated at 32 miles and the width at 14 miles. 
The forests along the coasts of these islands, as well 
as on the margins of innumerable small streams, 
are declared to be particularly rich in rubber. 
Navigation around these i.slands has been dis- 
. covered only recently to be entirely safe. 
The cost of living in Para is very high. Imagine 
paying 3$000 (about .50 cents at present exchange) 
for a pint of milk or 24.§00O (or fi4) for the 
laundrying of a gentleman's white .suit! Gkao 
Para. 'Para, Brazil, March 3, 1899. 
STILL ANOTHER SOURCE OF RUBBER. 
The secretary and managing director of the 
Musa Elver I'lantation Co., Limited, _ who are 
operating at Samai'ai, New Guinea, writes to the 
Jjulia, liubbcr Wo)-l(l that the Ficus clastica 
(the rubber tree of Assam) is indigenous to that 
part of the island, 'and that until they see reason 
to plant a better species — if there is a better 
one for that region— they will devote their atten- 
tion to this tree and its product. This enterprise 
is the result of explorations made by Dr. Cecil 
Vaughan, an Englishman, who visited New Guinea 
as early as 1884. 
In his "Cantor" lectures of India-rubber, Dr. 
Morris says of rubber from New Guinea, which 
lies east of Borneo and is separated by a dis- 
)>oint of North Australia. He naoUm froin varioas 
authorities evidence of the existence of rubber 
on tlial island. The exjwrt* of New Guiue* 
rubber in lSM)-97 were eRtuiialed at (iti.tXXi pounds, 
of the value of £7,000. The price quute^l iu London, 
July 1, 1808, Wilis J/i. Hd. to is. 10i<l, per p<jund. 
Not long ago Australian nevrspaperc printed 
news from Cooktown, New (iuinca. nicutioninK 
tliHt two parties were working for India rubljcr 
near Manibare. also on Ihe coast, jx-niliiig the 
arrival of supplieo and carriers for uoe inlmid. 
OIJR MINERAL WEALTH. 
It is <|uit<.* evident that the jo«^Ht atU-ntiun 
now directed Ut tlic one mineral of fom- 
ineicial iuiportaiue hithei-to devehijx'd in 
Ceylon, nau)ely plumbago, in likely to lead 
to investigitions iii respe-ct of" a good 
many «)ther minerals. At the same 
time, it is a great shame tliat the island 
is still without a Geologiciil and Minera- 
Jogical sTuvey to gui<ie enquii-ei-s. There 
an- extant a number of many papei-H refer- 
ring to isolated districts and explorationa, 
hut a systematic reliable emjtiiry and survey 
have yet to realized; and 'it would be 
well if Governor Ridgeway saw to the 
ap^iointnient of a competent Geologist, 
beiori' returning from England. 
Tliere are now several Mining Engineers 
in the island and they are naturally curious 
about our Mineralogy. Plumhagxj is, no 
dovibt, the innnediate cause of their pivK«*nce ; 
hut it is imix)ssil)le they should confine 
their attention or interest to that mineral 
alone. One gentleman has alre^y l)een 
making enquiries as to the means available 
f(n- fitting up an Assay Office and whether 
there was any such U> be found in Colombo. 
Our correspondent h;is been a professionai 
Assayer and Metallurgist for a nmnber of 
years; and bist year he made a trip to 
Cevlon. He has been chiefly engaged since 
in the .south of the island, and has discovered' 
inter nlUi. that many of our conglomemtee 
carry gold, and he lias also— while reporting 
on plumbago— sampled a number of^ rockl 
containing gold, as well a.s some others of the 
rarer metals. Of course, it is true that gold 
is about the most widely disseminated of all 
metals and traces of it in Ceylon have been 
found again and again, both in the hill and 
low country; while the native names of 
several villages and districts indicate where 
the Sinhalese have, from time immemorial 
found the precious metal. Ruanwella, Ran- 
gala, Ramboda, to name onlv three are 
points widely apart— west, north and south 
of Kandy; but a good deal of "washing" 
"bhisting" and mining in the early "eightiS" 
—when coffee was expiring— gave no pay. 
able or satisfactory results. It is quite 
possible, however, that we had not the 
needful scientific or practical knowledge to 
direct these experiments ; and that the time 
is appioaching when we may see other 
mineral industries, besides that in plumbago 
and the native digging for gems (recentlv 
supplemented by a European experiment with 
a patent gem-separating machine), estab- 
lished in our midst. The Mining Engineer 
and Assayer, whom we have already quoted 
thinks he has discovered a mineral-bearins 
zone crossing the island, and he has abeadv 
p^cured evidences of thirty metals esistio 
1 
