f twenty or twenty-five years; but, under the combined influence
of the indolence of the Mestitzoes and the shortsightedness of the
government, measures to that end will be adopted and carried into effect
only when the rubber exportation shall have diminished with the
destruction of the trees, and when European and North American
manufacturers shall have found out a more or less appropriate substitute
for the too costly resin.

Near the Praia de Tamandua we acquainted ourselves with all the
particulars respecting the collection and preparation of the caoutchouc
at the cottage of a Bolivian seringueiro, Don Domingo Leigue. As I have
already stated, the Siphonia grows, or at least thrives, only on a soil
wherein its stem is annually submerged by the floods to the height of
three feet or more. The best ground for it, therefore, is the _igapo_,
the lowest and most recent deposit of the river; and there, in the
immediate vicinity of the seringaes, may be seen the low thatches of the
gatherers' huts, wretched hovels mostly, rendered tenantable during the
inundations by the device of raising the floors on wooden piles of
seven feet height, in which the canoe, the seringueiro's indispensable
horse, also finds a protected harbor. Unenviable truly must be the life
of the happy proprietor, who has nothing to do in the seringal during
the wet season, and who then has ample leisure to calculate exactly the
intervals between his fits of ague, and to let himself be devoured by
_carapanas_, _piums_, _motucas_, and _mucuims_; under which euphonious
names are known some of the most terrible of insect pests.

Narrow paths lead from the cottage, through the dense underwood, to each
separate tree; and, as soon as the dry season sets in, the inmate of the
palace just described betakes himself with his hatchet into the
seringal, to cut little holes in the bark. The milk-white sap
immediately begins to exude into pieces of bamboo tied below, over
little clay cups set under the gashes to prevent their trickling down
the stems. The collector travels thus from trunk to trunk; and, to
facilitate operations, on his return visit he pours the contents of the
bamboos into a large calabash provided with liana straps, which he
empties at home into one of those large turtle-shells so auxiliary to
housekeeping in these regions, serving as they do for troughs, basins,
etc.

Without any delay he sets about the smoking process, as the resinous
parts will