May 2, 1892.1 
847 
oovere'd another reason he is jealous. White womeu 
Jike Burmefo women, find John Ohinsman very kind 
HuJ f^oQci to them. Many a trampled bullied wretch 
finds a haven of rest among ChiuamGU. Missionaries 
jump to the conclusion that a white woman married 
to or kept by a Ubinaman is lost and abandoned. 
I say no. They are happier with the thrifty, kind, 
musouUr, happy Chinaman than with the drunken, 
brutal, halting bully of awhile man. The terrible 
pictures of white women in Chinese " hellb" is all 
"gammon" The white man's "hell" is a far more 
terrible reality for women of that class. Little Burke 
Street is disgraced more by the larrikin than by the 
Chinaman. A poor girl bullied by lha larrikin's flies 
for shelter to the Chinese and is well treated. The 
half-caste Chinaman is a bad bargain, inheriting the 
evil propensities of both parents. 
Abebdonensis. 
FIRE RISK ON CEYLON TEA ESTATES. 
We have received the following correflpondence : — 
Ceylon Association in London, 4, Mincing Lane, 
Loudon, B. C, 
March !)th, 1892. 
A. B. BagnoW, Esq., Secretary, Fire Offic( s Committee. 
Sir, — This Association, as represebting the Ceylon 
tea planters' interests, desires to bring to your notice 
the excessively high tariff charged by fire insurance 
companies on Ceylon tea factories, leaf withering 
shede, bungalows, and other estate buildings. These 
rates vary from 7s 6d per cent, to 40s per cent. This 
tariff was agreed to by the various fire insurance agents 
at a meeting held in Colombo on Aug. 30th, 1889. 
From figures furnished by some of the leading tea 
companies, representing forty-seven factories (which 
may be taken as suflScient data for the whole of the 
factories insured), we find that the maximum policy 
for any estate amounts to £5,000 and the minimum 
£150. Those forty-seven estRtes pay on policies 
amijunting to £88,629 the sum of £795 net for pre- 
miums, or 173 lOd per cent. There are some 350 tea 
factories in Ceylon, the value of which, at £1,900 
per estate, amounts to £665,000, giving, at 178 lOd, 
nay £6,000 per annnm in premiums. These premiums 
vfould therefore allow a liberal margin for charges 
and profit if two fuotories were burnt down per an- 
num. With regard to the risk of fires we have no 
exact figures, but we believe £5,000 would more than 
cover the losses suffered by fire insurance companies 
during the past ten years. 
The aseooiation is of upinioa that these high 
rates have been charged because the real risks are as 
imperfectiy understood by Boglish fire insurance com- 
panies as Ceylon life risks were until recently by 
life ofiBces. 
The business has not probably been sufficiently 
large when divided amonn many offices to warrant 
the expense of sending a qualified supervisor to Ceylon 
to study factory risks, and factory proprietors feel 
that the tariff has been arbitrarily fixed so exces- 
sively high on an assumed heavy risk which does not 
exist, and the real value of which has probably never 
been calculated. 
This associstion trusts that the various fire com- 
compaciea will, on consideration, be able to very 
materially reduce their tariff so as to bo more in 
conformity with the rates paid on the same class 
of buildingf in England, as we are assured that 
many of the larger tea companies and factory 
proprietors are seriously considering the desira- 
bility of mutually protecting themselves againts fire 
risks rather than continue to pay what they consider 
the uuwarraiitablu high rates now charged. — I am, 
sir, yours faithfully, 
(Signed) Wm. Martin Leake, Secretary. 
(Kkply.) 
Fire OfUoes ('ommittee (Foreign), 
C3, VVatling Street, and 11, (lucen Street, 
London, March ll,lsD2. 
Wm. Martin Leake, E^n , Secretary, OLiylou Apso- 
oiatiou in London 
Dear Sir, — In reply to your letter cf the '.Hh inst., 
in vvUioli you call alteutioa to what; you cuasidec tbo 
high rates charged for tea factories, &c., in Oeylon. 
I bee to inform you that the matter is not one with 
which it falls within our province to deal, as the 
tariff to which you refer has not been settled through 
this Committee . — Yours faithfully, 
(Signed) AiKx. B. BAaNOLD, Secretary, 
—E. and C. Mail, March> 2&th. 
_ ^ 
RUBBER GATHERING ON THE AMAZON. 
At the instigation of the editor of the India Rubber 
World, the Department of State, through the consular 
offices, has been engaged in making some extended re- 
searches into the rubber industry of the world. Theae 
rxports are valuable and interesting, and great praise ia 
due Mr. Hawthorne Hill, the editor of oar contempo- 
rary, for the effort put forth to secure these reports, by 
which "the extent of rubber forests of the world has 
been demonstrated to be so extensive that any possibi- 
lity of cornering the crude rubber supply is impractic- 
able ; that the once-threatened extinction of the rubber 
forests is apt now to be checked by Governmental pre- 
cuutions agiiinst wasteful methods of gathering rubber, 
and that new sources of gutta percha supplies have 
been discovered which will prevent a scarcity of this 
commodity, and thus encourage the building of ocean 
cables." From these reports we quote the following 
intereetin? description of 
BUBIiEK-GATHERING IN THE AMAZON VALIET. 
" The rubber'gatherer rolls out of his hammock as 
soon as it is light in the morning, takes his gulp of rum 
and his calabash of coffee, starts out to visit his rubber 
trees. He wears a short pair of breeches, and some- 
times a shirt. He goes barefoot, for he must wade 
though the swamp mud and ooze of the tide up to his 
knees, and often up to bis waist in water. He takes a 
basket full of earthenware gill cups, a hunk of adhesive 
clay 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 bis hatchet, 
makiog 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 apat 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 an equal height, is the rule. The 
next day he will make three more gaahea 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 oi his 100 or 150 trees is 
treated in the same way, and he returns home after 
having travelled from three to five mileB,lbarefoot and 
almost naked, through thorny thicket and malaria- 
steaming swamp. 
'* Whun he reaches his hut again be takes another 
gulp from the demijohn, snatchea a breakfast of salt 
fish and mandioca meal, which are ofien moldy from 
the reeking damp of the swamp, and then atarts out 
again with his calabash buckets to gather the milk, 
which by this time has ceaaed 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 this milk. For this 
purpose he lias a jug-shaped furnace, made of earthen- 
ware, called a tioiao, open at bottom and top, and with a 
small aperture at the side to admit the air for the com- 
bustion. In this piece of furniture he builds a fire, or 
rather a smudge, with the nuts of the iuaja or urucry 
palm. The dense black smoke which rolls from the 
open top of the buiao is the reagent which coagulates 
the milk. For this purpose the rubber gatherer has a 
cirouliir-bladed paddle, like the paddle of a canoe, 
which ho smears over with clay so that the rubber will 
not adhere to it. This is siispeuded by means of a cord 
from the limb of a tree just above the smudge. The 
milk 18 poured over the blade of the paddle, which ia 
thou turned over and round about in the smoke, and iu 
a fow moments the (ilm of rubber is ooagulateil. The 
same prooess is repeated of wetting with milk and 
uniokiiig tho growing lump until it roaches the weight 
of from Uvo to twenty-five kilos or more. Then it ra 
slipped off from IbQ paddle aa • oiitteu is pulled 9^ 
