Balata and the Balata Industry. 189 
the season lasts, than the best mechanical trade. With 
fair weather, a man can earn from one to five dollars a 
day at it. An exceptionally expert collector has been 
known to make twenty dollars in three days. The last 
collector I had a conversation with, before I left the 
river, told me that he had collected three gallons the 
day before, but often obtained more ; that in the pre- 
vious three weeks he had collected 36 gallons, and in 
less than two months 56 gallons. During the time he 
said he had worked four days a week ordinarily, resting 
the other three, but had lost a good many days as well 
through rain. Numerous other conversations that I had 
with collectors, all showed alike the very profitable 
nature of the industry when carried on by an expert and 
industrious man. Twenty years ago when tke annual 
export only reached 20,000 Tbs., balata collecting was 
described as the principal industrial pursuit on the 
Canje. The River population then was 400. It has 
since increased one-half, while the production of balata, 
of late years, has increased four or five fold. Allowing 
for the portion of this obtained in other parts of the 
colony, there must yet have been a great influx of out- 
side labour to the bullet-tree districts to account for the 
greater advance in the exported balata over the increase 
of the permanent population. 
I have mentioned that the river inhabitants are of 
slave descent. They are consequently negroes. The 
collectors who come from other quarters, are of the 
same race. They are all typically hardy well-built 
fellows, capable of heavy work, and possessing great 
powers of endurance. As they met in the early morn- 
ing while the settlement was still thinly enshrouded in 
