i3 
quantities to other places. According to the best historians, the 
cities along the Gulf of Mexico, were in the habit of paying to the 
Astecs annually, among other products, a tribute of 16,000 cargoes 
of elastic gum. Among other uses to which this article was put 
included the manufacture of balls used by them in their games 
which use extended, among certain of our indigenous tribes, right 
down to the South of Brazil. 
The primitive name given to elastic gum in Mexico was Ule, (1) 
ule , or hule which was adapted and got perpetuated by those of 
our savages descended from the Caribs. 
By the human avalanche occurring from north to south and 
spreading into South America, the use of elastic gum became 
vulgarised. One of the subdivision of the tribe of Nauhds reach- 
ing New Grenada and there establishing themselves, were accused 
of cannibalism and harassed by the Spanish conquerors, when dis- 
persing again, one section descended and reached the Amazon 
River. 
This section of Nauhds took various names, becoming corrupted 
eventually into Nauhud, Magna , Omand and Omagua. Warred 
against by the tribes already established along the margins of this 
great river, they were by these tribes called Cambebas (2) that is to 
say, fiat heads from their use of the platycephalia , which custom 
disappeared towards the end of the last century, on the advent in 
that region, of religion and civilization. 
This tribe of Omanas gave to those tribes already inhabiting this 
region, their knowledge of elastic gum, of its application and of its 
preparation for the use of civilization. 
The Nauhas utilized the Ule (Castilloa elastica Cerv.) and the 
Omanas, not finding this in the Amazons, substituted with advan- 
tage the Hevea , giving to it also the name of Ule. This name the 
Caribs of Guiana corrupted into Neve. The French botanist AUBLET 
adopted this name scientifically and from it arose the genus Hevea. 
By the coagulation of the milk furnished by these trees, the 
Omanas prepared, bv processes acquired from their ancestors, 
flambeaux, balls, tubs, flagons &c M for their domestic use and 
as repositories for their beverages. Among other objects prepared 
by these people figured the syringe {Seringa) using it in their 
festivals, likewise in cases of sickness. 
Though elastic gum was known to the Cambebas since the six- 
teenth century, they were yet ingorant of the source from which it 
came or how it was prepared. Later on, towards the end of the 
seventeenth century, when the Portuguese missions began to ex- 
tend, and through them, products from the Amazons were remitted 
to Europe, were many articles made by these Cambebas or Omauas 
from Ule. 
The first known elastic gum in Europe, came from the East 
Indies, and its use was exclusively confined, until 1820, to eras- 
ing pencil lines made on paper, hence the derivation of the name 
(1) Ule is an Asiatic word introduced by the Phcenicians from Greece, meaning 
dripping water, and which gave origin to the word uligo, humidity. 
(2) From Akong head, and pena flat. 
\ 
