PREPARATION OP DAPICHO. 
345 
■’ ' ' ' 1 ' educing tie dapicho into 
several bits on a slendei 
stick, and was roasting them like meat. The dapicho black- 
ens in proportion as it grows soft, and becomes elastic. 
The resinous and aromatic smell which filled the hut, seemed 
to indicate that this coloration is the effect of the decom- 
position of a carburet of hydrogen, and that the carbon 
appears in proportion as the hydrogen bums at a low heat. 
The Indian beat the softened* and blackened mass with a 
piece of brazil-wood, formed at one end like a club ; ho then 
kneaded the dapicho into balls of three or four inches in 
diameter, and let it cool. These balls exactly resemble the 
caoutchouc of the shops, but their surface remains in general 
slightly viscous. They are used at San Balthasar in the 
Indian game of tennis, which is celebrated among the inha- 
bitants of Uruana and Encaramada ; they are also cut into 
cylinders, to be used as corks, and are far preferable to 
those made of the bark of the cork-tree. 
This use of caoutchouc appeared to us the more worthy 
notice, as we had been often embarrassed by the want of Euro- 
pean corks. The great utility of cork is fully understood in 
countries where trade has not supplied this bark in plenty. 
Equinoctial America nowhere produces, not even on the 
hack of the Andes, an oak resembling the Quercus suber ; 
and. neither the light wood of the bombax, the ochroma, and 
other malvaceous plants, nor the rhachis of maize, of which 
the natives make use, can well supply the place of our corks. 
The missionary showed us, before the Casa do los Solteros 
(the house where the young unmarried men reside), a drum, 
■which was a hollow cylinder of wood, two feet long and 
eighteen inches thick. This drum was beaten with great 
tti asses of dapicho, which served as drumsticks; it had 
openings which could be stopped by the hand at will, to 
vary the sounds, and was fixed, on two fight supports. Sa- 
vage notions love noisy music ; the drum and the botuto, or 
tpumpet of baked earth, in winch a tube of three or four 
feet long communicates with several barrels, are indis- 
pensable instalments among the Indians for their grand 
pieces of music. 
The night of the 30th of April was sufficiently fine for 
observing the meridian heights of x of the Southern Cross, 
I 
