hen Columbus discovered Santo Domingo he found the natives playing with
balls made from the gum of the caoutchouc tree. The soldiers of Pizarro,
when they conquered Inca-Land, adopted the Peruvian custom of smearing
caoutchouc over their coats to keep out the rain. A French scientist, M.
de la Condamine, who went to South America to measure the earth, came
back in 1745 with some specimens of caoutchouc from Para as well as
quinine from Peru. The vessel on which he returned, the brig _Minerva_,
had a narrow escape from capture by an English cruiser, for Great
Britain was jealous of any trespassing on her American sphere of
influence. The Old World need not have waited for the discovery of the
New, for the rubber tree grows wild in Annam as well as Brazil, but none
of the Asiatics seems to have discovered any of the many uses of the
juice that exudes from breaks in the bark.

The first practical use that was made of it gave it the name that has
stuck to it in English ever since. Magellan announced in 1772 that it
was good to remove pencil marks. A lump of it was sent over from France
to Priestley, the clergyman chemist who discovered oxygen and was mobbed
out of Manchester for being a republican and took refuge in
Pennsylvania. He cut the lump into little cubes and gave them to his
friends to eradicate their mistakes in writing or figuring. Then they
asked him what the queer things were and he said that they were "India
rubbers."

[Illustration: FOREST RUBBER

Compare this tropical tangle and gnarled trunk with the straight tree
and cleared ground of the plantation. At the foot of the trunk are cups
collecting rubber juice.]

[Illustration: PLANTATION RUBBER

This spiral cut draws off the milk as completely and quickly as possible
without harming the tree. The man is pulling off a strip of coagulated
rubber that clogs it.]

[Illustration: IN MAKING GARDEN HOSE THE RUBBER IS FORMED INTO A TUBE
BY THE MACHINE ON THE RIGHT AND COILED ON THE TABLE TO THE LEFT]

The Peruvian natives had used caoutchouc for water-proof clothing,
shoes, bottles and syringes, but Europe was slow to take it up, for the
stuff was too sticky and smelled too bad in hot weather to become
fashionable in fastidious circles. In 1825 Mackintosh made his name
immortal by putting a layer of rubber between two cloths.

A German chemist, Ludersdorf, discovered in 1832 that the gum could be
hardened by treating it with sulfur dissolved in turpentine.