186 TlMEHRI. 
the milk, which operations take till about 2 p.m., when 
they return again to the settlement, which is reached 
about 5 p.m. On some of the grants where the collecting 
ground is very remote, the collectors remain out for 
two or three days, making only two journeys a week. 
But however far they have to go for it, the milk is all 
dried at the settlement. The ground generally that 
they have to traverse is wet and swampy, and locomo- 
tion over it often very difficult. In one place that I 
visited the way lay over land in which the traveller 
sank at every step to his knees, and there were miles 
of this before the collecting ground was reached. Pro- 
gress under the conditions was to me impossible, and, 
after tediously dragging through a few hundred yards, 
I had to abandon it. But this compares favourably with 
some of the ground the collectors traverse, or attempt 
to traverse, in their search for bullet-tree reefs. In de- 
scribing their journeys, they tell of meeting swamps that 
have taken three hours to cross, and of others in which 
they have waded up to their waists or armpits in water, 
till, exhausted, they have had to return defeated, unable 
to get to the other side. These swampy tracts are 
covered with high torest, but it contains few or no bullet- 
trees. The direction to pursue they ascertain, as do 
other forest workers in tropical America in search of 
particular trees, by ascending to the roof of the forest 
and, from some elevated branch, surveying the surface 
as far as they can see, when the dark rusty-green of the 
foliage of the bullet-trees reveals their whereabouts. 
The vocation is not by any means an easy one. It 
involves under the best conditions great industry, and 
patience in a tedious occupation, while the work lasts, 
